


Ghost Story

by extree



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 151,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extree/pseuds/extree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle French is a part time librarian and an aspiring children's author with a case of writer's block. When things begin to go bump in the night in her cozy little loft apartment, Belle finds herself haunted by a strange new muse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Late One Stormy Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty much exactly what you think it is, provided you're thinking 'ghost boyfriend AU.' I realize it might be weird as hell, but I just couldn't resist. I've been sitting on this idea for a while.
> 
> Edit: The awesome **foxmurphy** on Tumblr has made [this amazingly adorable fic cover](http://foxmurphy.tumblr.com/post/101888751575) for this story. Thank you so much. :') <3

“I’m serious, Gaston.”

“Baby, come on.”

“Don’t baby me. We broke up weeks ago.”

This conversation again. Belle practically knew it by heart at this point. He would try and pin everything on her in just a moment, and proclaim himself the one true defender of their relationship, even as it lay shattered in millions of pieces at their feet, and he kept stepping on them like the oaf he was.

“ _You_ broke up with _me_. I didn’t want this.”

And there it was. He was nothing if not predictable.

“I don’t care what you want. You need to leave right now,” she said calmly, folding her arms over her chest.

He shook his head, made some sort of strange sound of disbelief and asked her, “Why did you even let me in if you were just going to kick me out again?”

“Oh my God, Gaston, seriously? Because you asked to come pick up your crap! You’ve got your crap, now leave.”

Belle rarely raised her voice, but if she hadn’t spat out those words with a bit of an edge to them, they would have caught in her throat, tangled like knots, clogging up her airways and threatening to make her cry out of frustration. Gaston seemed taken aback, which was good. He stared at her for a moment, his mouth open (God, she hated that) and his eyes wide and unblinking.

“Don’t have to be a bitch about it,” he finally muttered.

“Apparently, I do. Get out.”

For a moment there, Belle thought that had done the trick. She could almost taste the freedom on her tongue and smell the fresh, Gaston-less air, but then life was rarely that easy, was it? And ex-boyfriends rarely that agreeable.

“No!” he boomed, the sudden strength of his voice making her cringe. Her poor neighbors, oh God. “I’m gonna go take a leak and then we’re going to talk this out, babe!”

“There’s nothing to talk about! And stop calling me that!”

“Yes there fucking is! _Babe!_ ”

And with that, he stomped off to her bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him, leaving her standing there with her arms no longer crossed but wrapped around her chest instead. When she noticed it, she snapped her arms back to her sides and tried to find some sort of posture that screamed ‘I’m done with your bullshit and you don’t intimidate me!’ Her fists clenched, her chin up just a little bit, her feet shoulder width apart. That felt about right. She didn’t want to shout at him, but she would if she had to. She’d almost gotten through to him, earlier, that way.

So at what point do you call the cops on your ex-boyfriend when he refuses to leave your apartment? Preferably before the neighbors call the cops on the both of you, right? God, this was awful. _He_ was awful. She’d made plans for the night, but then she had to cancel them because Gaston absolutely insisted he had to come pick up his things tonight. Wouldn’t give her a solid reason, just told her it had to be tonight, and she folded just like she’d done throughout their relationship.

She really didn’t know what else to do, short of getting a restraining order that Gaston’s father would probably manage to get thrown out immediately. So instead of a fun night out with her busy friends, she was about to sit and listen to Gaston go on and on about how she was the woman for him, that he needed her, that he was the only man who could ever ‘handle her,’ - whatever the hell that meant - until he got tired of talking and tried to get her into bed again. Her friends were probably drunk off their faces right now, having the time of their lives.

Enough was enough. Belle was sick and tired of having to break up with him over and over again. She didn’t know how, but tonight, she would get through to him. She’d just have to talk until her throat was sore, maybe draw him a picture, too, but he was not going to keep crashing into her life like this. Not anymore.

He was jiggling the door handle now. He must have locked the bathroom without thinking. Or maybe he’d somehow forgotten the entire concept of doors and locks? Because he kept jiggling the handle, and nothing was happening.

“Do you need some help?” she asked, half hoping he couldn’t hear her through the door.

Suddenly there was a thunderous noise; an incredibly loud bang in the bathroom that almost had her wrapping her arms around herself again out of pure self-preservation instinct. It sounded a little bit like he’d slammed the medicine cabinet shut, but that was only the beginning. It was a cacophony of thuds and crashes, the sound of every tap running, and suddenly a cry that sounded like it was Gaston’s, but was just a little bit more high pitched. What the hell was he doing? Did he punch the mirror or something? Trip over the laundry basket and face planted into the medicine cabinet? And now he was rattling the handle like a madman, but the door wasn’t budging. Had he seriously locked himself in?

“What’s going on in there?” she cried.

Belle grabbed her phone and was ready to dial either an ambulance or the police, when suddenly Gaston came flying out of the bathroom, the blood drained from his face and his eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish.

“Gaston, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting out of here. Where’s my stuff?”

“In that box by the door. What did you do to my bathroom?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Have a nice life.”

And he was gone. He didn’t even slam the door shut behind him. Did he just rip apart her bathroom out of spite? God, what a child. She supposed she had better go check out the damage, but when she peeked her head around the corner, there was absolutely nothing out of place. Nothing at all. All of her hair products were still there in front of the mirror, her toothbrush in the little cup, mouthwash and toothpaste all still where she’d left them, and the medicine cabinet mirror was still in one piece. It was cold in there, though, like he’d opened the window and then… closed it again? Something caught her eye. The mirror. It wasn’t broken, but he had written something in the steam from the hot water he seemed to have run for some reason. What did that say? Love? Leave? It didn’t even matter. She wiped the hastily scrawled letters away, clicked off the bathroom light and left the room.

He was probably just trying to unsettle her. He must have been desperate.

It was tempting to text him and demand an explanation, but knowing Gaston, he would take that as an invitation to come back. That’s probably exactly what he wanted. At least his things were gone, now. His toothbrush, his decidedly un-funny “funny” t-shirts, his awful CDs and the endless supply of Michael Bay movies he seemed to have - all of it, gone. Good. Going through the apartment earlier and tossing all of his thing in a cardboard box was eye-opening, actually. She hadn’t realized how many of his things had ended up there. It was like he’d been steadily sneaking himself in, and suddenly it all made so much sense.

For months now, she’d been feeling cramped in her own apartment. If he wasn’t there on her couch or reading over her shoulder as she typed, she’d trip over one of his socks or find his dirty dishes in the sink. And when she finally managed to break up with him (he avoided her for about a week because he _knew_ she was fed up and was too nice a person to break up with him over the phone) there was still so much of him in her space it made her want to just throw everything out of the window.

But she didn’t want to risk hitting an innocent pedestrian with a can of Axe.

The silence was deafening, now, and for a strange few moments, Belle had absolutely no idea what to do. Cry? Laugh? Drink? She didn’t feel an impulse to do anything, really, and it was an emptiness that was a welcome change from the suffocating presence of that bathroom tornado of an ex-boyfriend of hers. It was too late to join up with her friends, now. They’d be well on their way to passing out stone cold.

So with a sigh, Belle sat down at her desk and turned on her laptop. Maybe now she could finally write something that was just for her. She’d been doing okay for herself, recently, writing those horrid ‘Ten reasons why…’, ‘The five best…’, ‘You won’t believe…’ click bait articles that made her want to roll her eyes for days. She could churn those out pretty quick, and there were always takers. Did it pain her to write them? Yes. Did it pay more than the cost of the wine she needed to get through them? Yup. So write them she did. Her job at the library was never going to be a full time thing, anyway. The town couldn’t afford full time employees, and Belle was happy to take what she could get.

The cursor blinked. And blinked. And kept blinking. But her fingers stayed hovering over the keys, absolutely refusing to produce anything at all, no matter how long she stared, or how hard she thought. Nothing.

Might as well stare at the inside of her own fridge for a bit, then. She stood there and rummaged through the depressing contents of her long neglected refrigerator and let herself shift things around with a _bit_ more force than was strictly necessary until she noticed something that shouldn’t have been there.

A single can of beer. Nothing good; just Gaston’s favorite watered down American crap. She took it out, gave it a critical look, then with a sudden sense of entitlement, Belle opened it, took a massive gulp and kicked the fridge door shut in a series of smooth movements. Why not?

She slammed the can down next to her laptop. It tasted awful, but she was all out of wine, so this would have to do. She sighed and sat down to bravely face her empty white page and the blinking cursor once again, but the page wasn’t empty anymore.

 

_Write_

Huh? Hm. Well then, at least she’d made her word count go up exponentially without even consciously trying? She always did get a little spaced out when she hadn’t slept properly, and this whole never-ending breakup thing with Gaston meant that she hadn’t been able to do that in weeks. But with a little smile, she registered the sound of rain tapping softly against the windows and she knew that she would sleep well tonight.

Belle loved her little apartment in that old converted cannery. It was a huge brick building with quite a few tenants, and Belle’s little place was one of the smallest, but it was comfortable and cozy, and it was just in her price range. It was mostly open plan - save for the bathroom, of course - and her bed was up in the mezzanine above the kitchen area. That’s also where the rest of her books were stacked, because she’d run out of shelf space in the living area down below. It looked a little messy in daylight, but once the sun had set and Belle lit the candles and plugged in the string lights, the entire place was perfect. Just perfect.

The rain would be lovely to listen to up in her bed on the mezzanine in a bit, after she’d given this one more try. She backspaced until the word was gone and watched the cursor blink a few more times before putting her fingers to the keys again and again until letters became words, became sentences and grew into paragraphs. Bit by bit.

It was only when the eye strain became too difficult to ignore that Belle stopped typing. She scrolled up, and down, and up again, checked the word count and beamed at the screen. She’d written over a thousand words in - she checked the little clock in the corner - less than an hour. It wasn’t necessarily the speed at which she’d written this thing that made her smile like that, because she’d gotten the hang of those blog posts and bullet point articles ages ago and could write those at the speed of light, but rather the fact that there were now over one thousand words that belonged to her. Just her. Not some website. Not some blog. And it was a start.

A start to what? She wasn’t sure, exactly. She’d started writing about a little girl trying to fall asleep at night, but the shadows kept changing into monstrous shapes, and instead of being scared, she was intrigued and couldn’t still her whirring mind and close her eyes to get some rest. A children’s book, maybe? Maybe. That would be nice.

But now her eyes were stinging and she was yawning and stretching in her chair, and it became glaringly obvious that Belle needed to get herself to bed. Or maybe just read a few more pages in that book she started reading last night; that way she could enjoy the sound of the rain a bit more. She would hop into her pajamas and read in bed. Yes, that seemed like the perfect compromise.

Just as she closed her laptop, the sky outside cracked open and flooded the room with a bright white flash of light. Not too long after, she heard a deep rumbling sound in the distance, and she smiled to herself. A little stormy weather as she read her mystery novel - how fitting! She’d left her pajamas in the bathroom that morning, so that’s where she got dressed for bed, and as she stood in front of the mirror and brushed her teeth furiously in an attempt to get the taste of that awful beer out of her mouth, the clouds outside the window clashed and battled loudly up above, the storm having blown nearer at a dizzying speed.

The lightning flashed brighter and more frequent, the thunder roared louder and longer. It was getting to be just a little bit intimidating, but Belle still didn’t really mind. It was cathartic, in a way; all of that elemental fury. The rain was pouring down with no sign of stopping, and a good deluge of nearly biblical proportions was exactly what she needed. Maybe that would finally wash away the last traces of Gaston.

And right as she closed the bathroom door behind her and turned off the main lights in the living area, it happened - so quick she almost missed it: a sudden brightness in the corner of her eye. She turned, blinked and saw a white, bluish outline of a see-through person; shoulders, arms, a head, and a face, right next to the window. A face with a strong nose and wide eyes, staring right at her, and then it was gone before the next rumble of thunder demanded to be heard. It could just as well have been a flash of lightning reflected off of… God, off of _anything._ That, and her overactive imagination. Definitely just that.

Belle hadn’t been sleeping all that well, either. She’d read about sleep deprivation, and how it could trigger hallucinations and things like that. Mostly auditory, but still… It would have explained the face, which was really quite detailed for a momentary trick of the eye.

Those eyes had seemed just as surprised as hers.

But that was ridiculous. See, Belle was a well read woman. She read anything and everything; be it silly romance novels, mysteries, horror, the classics, the newspaper, the back of a box of cereal, scientific articles and popular books on physics, trashy magazines - just anything, really. So while she absolutely loved the thought of the supernatural as a fictional subject, she knew very well that that’s just what it was. A fictional subject. She _knew_ how the mind could play tricks on itself. Matrixing, pareidolia, that sort of stuff. Belle was just enough of a romantic to have an interest in these things, and just enough of a skeptic not to get carried away by them.

Which is why she was absolutely sure she just needed some sleep.

Belle shook her head and made her way up to the mezzanine, and she had to grasp the steps and hold on for dear life when a sudden loud bang from the apartment below startled her so bad she almost tumbled off the stairs. Jesus Christ, that was some horrible timing. Someone must have dropped something. That’s what it was.

And her heart was only beating faster because her neighbor had startled her. That’s all. And she didn’t want to read anymore because she was more tired than she’d thought. Definitely. And she pulled the covers up over her head because it was chilly all of the sudden.

Not because she was freaked out.

Because Belle had _not_ just seen a ghost.


	2. Boo!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a terrible night, Belle has an equally unpleasant day at work. Nothing a little wine and some Chinese food can't fix. But what about the specter at the one-woman feast?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy this idea wasn't too weird! So, so happy with the response I've gotten so far. Thank you, seriously. You're all so lovely. <3
> 
> Just a little note: I had a few parts of this chapter pre-written. The next chapters will take a little longer.

The thing about adulthood is that in exchange for having to work to pay your bills and make your own tedious calls to the landlord or the gas company, you generally don’t have to put up with your parents meddling with your social life. That was the deal.

Which is why the phone call from her father Belle got while she was manning the desk at the library was particularly annoying.

“I’m working, dad. Is it urgent?” she whispered as she rushed into the office.

“Hey, doll. Gaston gave me a call.”

She damn near slammed the door shut behind her.

Why was she even surprised? That was a classic Gaston move - enlisting the help of _her own father_ to try and get her back. It was that subtle manipulative streak that had made her reconsider their relationship in the first place, and now he was up to his old tricks again. He’d never learn, would he?

“Did he, now?” she sighed.

“He’s really worried about you.”

“Wow. Okay. Did he tell you I broke up with him?”

“Oh. Not exactly. He told me you two’d had a disagreement and that you may have said some things you didn’t mean.”

“Dad, no, it wasn’t a disagreement. I broke up with him. Weeks ago. And I meant it. He has no business calling you!”

“Did he do something I should murder him for?”

“No, come on. No. We grew apart and he’s just being childish about the whole thing. That’s all.”

Her father was silent for a moment, until he cleared his throat and said, “So you two are over?”

“Yes. Definitely over. For good.”

“Are you sure that’s for the best?”

“Of course!”

Belle was getting the slightest bit agitated. The last thing she needed was her father taking her ex-boyfriend’s side in this whole thing, whether it was well-intentioned or not.

“I respect your decision, I promise, I really do, Belle. But are you going to be alright on your own?”

“I’m going to be _better_ on my own. Gaston was in the way.”

“In the way of what?”

“Everything. My writing, my friends… Everything. I’m doing great, now. I’ve started writing again, dad.”

She heard him sigh on the other end, and Belle knew that she was getting through to him. He was just concerned, that’s all. She knew that. He was like that when she finally moved out and got a place of her own, and he was twice as bad when she brought Gaston to meet him for the first time. It took him ages to finally stop glaring at him whenever they were in the same room, and Belle was willing to bet her father was now dreading the prospect of having to let another man into his little girl’s life, not that that was going to happen any time soon. It was sweet, in a way. But mostly annoying.

“Why didn’t you tell me things weren’t going well?”

“Because I don’t like you worrying about me.”

“I’ll always worry about you, Belle. Always. That’s my job.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I understand that, dad. But I can take care of myself and I need you to trust me.”

“I do, princess.”

“Don’t take Gaston’s calls anymore, please.”

“I won’t. Give me a call soon, okay? And tell me if I need to go kick his head in.”

“Alright, dad. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The unwise thing to do would be to call Gaston and tell him to leave her and her father alone, because that was probably exactly what he wanted. He’d been leaving her weepy drunken messages at night and sober, passive aggressive messages during the day, and Belle was proud of herself for ignoring every single one of them, except for a particularly nasty e-mail he’d sent her, to which she’d replied with a link to the section on stalking in the Maine criminal code. No more messages after that. He wasn’t _that_ stupid, apparently. And if he tried to contact her father now, he would surely disregard Belle’s request to just ignore his calls and roar and growl and put the fear of God in him. (And Belle wouldn’t have minded all that much.)

Oh, but she was angry, still. Belle didn’t take kindly to being patronized, and was there anything more patronizing than calling someone’s _dad_ on them?

She quietly closed the office door behind her and made her way back to the front desk, where there was an extremely disgruntled looking lady behind a giant stack of books waiting for her. She was rather small and Belle could barely see her over that tower of books, but as she neared, it became abundantly clear that this frail lady with the floral pattern coat was beyond irate. Ugh, that’s all she needed. An angry reader. Do you know how creative library dwellers can get with their insults?

“Ah. Finally.”

“I, uh, I’m s-so sorry, ma’am,” Belle stammered, grasping blindly for the scanner and the top book on the stack at the same time. “Are you checking all of these out?”

“I was going to, but not anymore,” the lady spat, angrily crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve been waiting here for five minutes. I have never in my life been disrespected in this manner.”

_But ma’am, you’re not seriously just going to leave this massive pile of books on my desk, right? These are going to take ages to put back in the right place. Books from the same section aren’t even stacked together; they’re all mixed. Are you an actual evil genius?_

That’s what she wanted to say. That’s not what she actually said.

“Oh. Um, I do apologize, but ma’am, I can still check these out for you. I’ll be quick.”

_Even though you’re way over the borrow limit and I don’t know how in the world you’re going to carry them all home, but that’s none of my business._

“Forget it! I’ll take my custom to another establishment!”

“It’s a free public service,” she muttered under her breath as the woman stomped off and left her with her mountain of books. “We’ll be just as broke with or without you.”

“What?” she shrieked from the doorway.

“Have a nice day!”

The good thing about the library doors was that they were impossible to slam shut. Belle tried not to giggle as she spied the lady almost losing her balance on the pavement outside right before the doors drifted slowly closed.

But the smile on her face died a sudden death when Belle counted over three times the maximum borrow limit. That was going to take her longer than she thought. Wonderful. She was going to have to stay late, seeing as how it was nearly closing time.

Good thing she had a bottle of wine waiting for her at home.

The first thing Belle did when she got there was plug in all of her string lights, making the entire place look ten times more cozy. It was a soft, soothing light that dulled all sharp edges and gave everything a warm glow, like extremely diligent little fireflies frozen in time and place.

The second thing she did was ditch her skirt for her comfiest pair of pajama pants, because she wasn't going to kid herself; it was going to be exactly that kind of lazy, useless evening.

She could have called Ruby, and she’d have been over in a flash with more wine and she would have verbally ripped Gaston to shreds for her entertainment. But the truth was, she wasn’t ready for that girl talk just yet. She knew exactly how the conversation would go, and the words “I told you so” would feature heavily. Rightly so, but still, Belle didn’t feel like it just yet, so a night alone with terrible TV it was.

Belle didn’t even bother finding a proper wine glass. Why would she go through that trouble while she was already eating the Chinese food she’d picked up after work straight from the box? She grabbed the nearest watertight container (which happened to be a coffee mug) and poured herself her first glass of the night. Mug of the night. Whichever. Thank God for awful Lifetime movies! Now she could stuff her face with nasi goreng and get pleasantly buzzed while watching something dumb about babies getting switched in the hospital, and maybe forget about her terrible day.

But that was the thing about awful Lifetime movies. They were _truly_ awful. And after one and a half glasses (mugs) of her favorite red wine and way too much Chinese food for one person to scarf down in one sitting, Belle found herself bored. Tipsy and bored. So she muted the TV, plugged her iPod into the speakers and picked a playlist that wouldn’t get on her nerves after a few songs. At least with the dialogue taken out of the equation and replaced with a mildly embarrassing 70s disco playlist playing softly in the background, the movie she was watching was a lot more tolerable.

But then again, without that awful dialogue to mock, Belle’s mind was free to drift to things it really shouldn’t. Like, for instance, that thing she saw last night that definitely wasn’t a ghost. With those eyes that seemed to be staring right at her in mild shock, but couldn’t have been. Because it wasn’t a ghost. That thing. That HD figment of her imagination.

Belle chuckled softly to herself, took a large sip from her half empty mug of wine, bit down on her lip and laughed again. A ghost. Honestly. How could she have let herself get that stressed, and that emotionally messed up that her mind would throw her a curveball like that?

“So. Mr. Ghost,” she sighed dramatically. “Had fun while I had an awful day at work? What’ve you been up to?”

She waited a few seconds while Abba played softly in the background, giggled at herself and then muttered, “Nothing? Yeah, I figured. Bet you’ve been sitting on my sofa watching Lifetime all day. Right?”

Dancing Queen played on, and Belle was getting steadily giddier, and (she took another massive gulp) tipsier, too. On the TV screen, someone just discovered that there had been a mix-up with the hospital bracelets all those years ago. Only a matter of time before they discover the awful life threatening genetic condition, now.

Well, okay. Perhaps now that she was jokingly talking to something she didn’t believe in, Belle had to admit to herself that Gaston did occasionally serve a purpose when she got home from work and found him drinking her orange juice straight from the carton and otherwise just taking up space; at least she could always vent to him then. He didn’t really listen (he’d pretend to, though) but she got all of that negativity out of her system, anyway.

“Not the chatty type? I’ll just tell you about my day then, shall I?”

But then again, the response she usually got from Gaston was more or less exactly the response she was getting now as she was talking into thin air: approximately zero.

“Well,” she sighed, “my ex-boyfriend called my dad on me, as you do, and then Satan decided to drop by the library to make sure I had to stay late. That was lovely.”

She poured the last bit of her wine down the hatch, put the mug on her salvaged coffee table (found by the bins when she went to put out the trash two years ago and almost smashed to smithereens when she tried to haul it up the stairs on her own) and threw herself flat on the couch, her arm lazily draped over her eyes.

“And now I’m talking to myself! So all in all, it’s been a great week, I’d say, in terms of mental stability. Seeing things, zoning out, jumpy as hell, talking to an imaginary ghost, slowly going insane…”

And in that moment, Belle didn’t know what would be the better option. An actual ghost shattering her scientific world view and turning her sense of reality upside down, or her mind slowly unravelling.

But it turned out she didn’t have much choice in the matter, because the dilemma was taken away from her when she heard a soft, deep voice with an accent she couldn’t place, asking her, “Are you going to scream if I show myself?”

Belle flung her arm wildly away from her face and bashed it against the coffee table in the process of sitting up straight and jumping up from the sofa, but the pain didn’t even register, frozen in her fight-or-flight response. Every muscle in her body was tense and every sense she possessed, regardless of the slightly foggy state of her mind, was sharpened. She was ready to run. But run from _what?_ She threw a hurried glance at the television screen, but it was still muted. The sound hadn’t come from that direction, anyhow, but still, what else could it have been?

The goddamn Bee Gees were playing softly in the background. She rushed to where she’d plugged her iPod into the speakers and turned the whole thing off. Must have been radio interference.

“ _Now_ she goes quiet,” said the voice.

Or not! Oh God!

There was something about the way he (it?) had said that - quietly, almost mumbling - that slowed her racing heart just a little bit. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound menacing at all. Belle had read about these things, these kind of hallucinations. They weren’t usually this complex, but they could be, couldn’t they? It had to be possible.

But still the only thing she could manage to utter was a dry, cracking, “Oh God.”

“Not quite.” The voice was closer now.

“Oh my God!” she cried again, clutching her hand to her chest.

“Alright, fine,” the voice sighed, “I can see it’s too much for you. Feel free to blame this entire thing on the wine tomorrow morning. Or food poisoning.”

“No! Wait!” she blurted. The words were out of her mouth - louder than expected. (Those poor neighbors of hers!)

Was it gone?

“I won’t scream,” Belle said softly.

Was she an idiot for entertaining what was in all likelihood her own tired, stressed out mind trying to trip her up? If there _was_ something, was it gone, now? And if it was going to show itself, please, please let it not be suddenly and right in front of her so the whole ‘not screaming’ thing wasn’t rendered completely impossible.

“Over here,” sounded the voice from somewhere behind her.

Swallowing her fear and clenching her fists tight by her side, Belle turned around, and there it was.

No, there _he_ was, the sofa and her little dining table between them. The nose was the same, but there was no bluish glow to him, now. Warmer in this light; see-through sepia, almost, with a white outline where the light hit him strongest.

Belle was trying to figure out what he was wearing, and why the bottom half of him was less defined, so she didn’t really notice his face folding into a frown until he said, “Didn’t anyone teach you it’s rude to stare?” and she snapped her head back up from his barely visible feet with a guilty look of shock.

“Oh!” She blinked, tore her gaze away for a moment and heard him softly snicker. “I’m sorry, it’s just that… I can sort of see right through you. Literally.”

“What?”

Belle sort of… motioned towards him with her hand, until he looked down and looked for himself.

“Why didn’t you just say so!”

Belle’s mouth dropped open slowly as the… thing, the ghost became just a little bit more solid. The white, glowing outline disappeared, and while he was still a little desaturated and translucent, he was no longer monochrome.

He had longish brown hair, and she guessed his eyes were brown, too. A white shirt, suspenders, and dark brown trousers as far as she could make out, because the bottom half of him was still too translucent to really _see_.

“Staring, dearie.”

Oh, right. Yes. She snapped her head up again and tried to figure out what on earth that look meant. It was difficult enough to make out his expression when she could see her shopping list on the fridge straight through his head, but he was standing so far off, too. His hands were clasped behind his back and his back was straight as a ruler.

“Well, I mean, I’m sorry, but it’s not like I see a ghost every day!”

Was it wise to talk back to a ghost? Too late now. Belle swallowed, tilted her chin up a little bit and clenched her fists even tighter.

“I suppose you have a point,” he grumbled in return.

Oh. Good. She let her fists unfold, her chin drop and her shoulders droop again, and she only just managed to stop herself from sighing in relief as if she were just narrowly missed by a runaway train hurtling down the tracks.

This was one of the most awkward encounters Belle had ever had, which was pretty damn hilarious if you took the time to think about it, which she couldn’t, because her mind was just a little preoccupied with trying to come to terms with the fact that there was a damn ghost standing in her kitchen.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Well, that was good news.

“You didn’t. I don’t think. I mean, this is strange, but you’re not… I mean… You’re not _scary_.”

She wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling, but frightened wasn’t it. Shocked, sure. There was also a sense of absurdity that, combined with a slight touch of nerves and two big mugs of wine, made her feel a little giggly.

“That’s good to hear, dearie, but I know you have a little bit of liquid courage in you tonight. I was referring to last night, during the storm.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. No, sure, you did frighten me then, now that you mention it.”

“I didn’t mean for you to see me. I think it must have had something to do with the electrical storm.”

“I figured. You looked a little surprised,” Belle replied with a nervous laugh that seemed to make him smile. _Seemed_ to, because she still couldn’t quite make out his face from that far away.

“Would you like to sit? Or do you… do you not sit?”

“I could sit, if you’d like.”

God, yes, definitely the most awkward encounter she’d ever had, and she couldn’t even use it as a hilarious anecdote for her friends, because they’d have her committed to an insane asylum. Which perhaps wasn’t that bad of an idea.

Belle motioned towards the sofa and curled up in the arm chair near the television, which was still muted, but on. She didn’t want to turn it off. The flickering images were comforting, somehow. Something of a reality, even though in a strange way, it was the most fictional thing in the room right now.

He walked without sound and when he sat down on the sofa, she didn’t see the fabric shift under his weight. With him sitting closer, now, she could see that his eyes were definitely brown. Very dark and almost black, but brown. She could see a few streaks of grey in his hair, now, and that nose of his was very strong indeed.

He was handsome. A handsome ghost. A handsome ghost sitting - or hovering - on her sofa and making awkward conversation with her.

Good God. And she was wearing her stupid Sesame Street pajama pants.

“So,” Belle said, clearing her throat (nervous habit) and wrapping her arms around her legs, “have you been here all this time?”

“In your flat? No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I stay up in the attic, most of the time.”

“Whoa, really? I’ve lived here for years and I didn’t know! There’s an _attic_?”

He was silent for a beat, gave her a look that screamed ‘are you slow, child’ and dryly replied, “There’s a _ghost_ , dearie.”

Oh. Right. And she was expressing wonder over the attic like an idiot. Nerves. Nerves and the wine.

“But yes,” sighed the ghost, folding his hands in his lap and leaning forward a bit. “There’s an attic, and I haven’t been secretly spying on you for years, if that’s what you were getting at.”

“But you were here just now, because you heard me talk to you. I mean, the idea of you.”

“Ah. Yes. Correct.”

“Why were you here?”

“Your argument with that buffoon last night,” he muttered, his voice a little deeper, his tongue wetting his lips for a split second. “I was curious to see how you were doing, but then you started talking to me, and like you said, you were only talking to the idea of me, but it’s been so long since anyone really… Well. You know.”

He fell silent and shrugged, and Belle felt the last of her apprehension that hadn’t already been dissolved in alcohol fade away as his sentence tapered off. So long since… anyone talked to him? Thought about him?

Oh, but…

“You were here? With Gaston and me?” she asked. He nodded in response. “You heard the argument?”

“The entire block did, dearie.”

“And that’s why you were here that night?”

Another quiet nod, a softly murmured, “He was out of order,” and then he looked down at his folded hands, and everything began to slide into place.

“It was you!” Belle cried. “In the bathroom! You chased him out!”

He lowered his head even more, as if he felt guilty, and before she knew it, Belle had stood up and rushed over to sit on the other end of the sofa. She couldn’t help herself - she wanted to see his face more clearly, be able to hear the nuance in his voice. Her sudden proximity seemed to have spooked him (was that ironic?) and he sat up straight and scooted back a little bit.

“I apologize for meddling, but I- I just,” he started, stammering for a moment until he swallowed and continued, “I just absolutely cannot stand men like that.”

“No, no! That was brilliant!” He perked up at her cheery tone. “Did you see his face when he ran out? The state of him!” Belle laughed, drawing her legs up on the sofa as she had in her arm chair, her arms hugging them to her chest again. “What did you do? Throw shampoo bottles at him? Everything was in place when I went to check.”

He straightened up a bit more and slowly began to smirk, and with a quick, casual shrug, said, “I tried to put everything back where I found it. I may be long dead, but my manners aren’t.”

“How considerate,” she giggled.

“May have whispered ‘get out’ in his ear, too.”

“Oh! Yeah, that would definitely explain the look of terror on his face.”

“Was it good?” he asked, grinning handsomely now. “I didn’t see. I was rushing to put everything back.”

“It was amazing,” she giggled. “Thank you.”

“’s Quite alright. My pleasure entirely.”

Maybe it was the wine, but there wasn’t a single frightened cell in her body, now. She couldn’t subdue her grin no matter how hard she tried, and he seemed to be having some trouble on that same front. Staring was rude, though, he’d said, so Belle forced herself to feign interest in the commercial break. From the corner of her eye, she saw him slump a little, after letting loose a silent sigh.

Was he more nervous than her?

Did she unnerve a bloody ghost?

“My name’s Belle French, by the way,” she offered, hoping that formality would perhaps lend some sense of normalcy to the situation.

“I know.”

“I figured you might. What’s yours?”

“Excellent question.”

“You don’t know?” she asked, only just managing to contain her shocked gasp.

“I don’t exactly remember,” he confessed.

Really? She must have looked incredulous or something, because he looked up at her and explained, “It’s easy to let things slip after a few decades of… whatever this-” he drew his hands through the air in a delicate, elegant flourish, gesturing towards his ghostly self, “- is.”

“But your name? Really?”

“Really.”

Well. That just wouldn’t do, would it? He seemed so lonely. So incredibly lonely. Grumpy, too. A bit prideful, maybe. But the fact that he had gone without human interaction for so long that he’d forgotten his own damn name was just too sad for Belle to handle.

“I’ll tell you what. You come back tomorrow night, same time, and I’ll have a name for you.”

His confused, mildly annoyed look was just comical now, and Belle found it difficult not to succumb to the giggles she felt bubbling up deep inside her belly.

“I don’t want a name,” he said, almost pouting (but that was probably not the effect he was going for.)

  
“Oh, come on. Why not?” Belle pushed, her grin growing wider as she noticed the corners of Mr. Ghost’s mouth twitch up quite against his will.

“Because if needed one, I’d have remembered mine,” he protested, folding his arms over his chest. “I don’t _need_ a name.”

Belle raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side to give him her best skeptical look. The specter doth protest too much.

“Well, _I_ need something to call you, don’ t I?”

He stared at her with slightly narrowed eyes, but she refused to break eye contact. Again, that was probably the wine. She was sitting there, on her sofa, next to a ghost - a _ghost_ \- and she was, what? Trying to get him to come back tomorrow? Was she trying to strike up a friendship with a ghost? Was she making a grave mistake (pun unintended), not heading to a psychiatrist right the fuck away?

If this was a hallucination, it was a good one.

“I’ll make you a deal,” the ghost finally said. “You give me an outline for your story tomorrow night, and I’ll let you name me whatever you like.”

“Deal!” she blurted without thinking.

Wait. How did he know about the story she was writing?

“Oh. _Oh_. I wasn’t losing my mind! _You_ typed ‘write!’ And that loud bang right as I went to bed!”

“That was the wee kitten in the flat below yours, knocked a copper figurine to the kitchen floor. It scared the bejeezus out of me, too.”

“Never mind the bloody cat, I’m so relieved you typed that. I thought I was losing it.”

He looked caught out, biting his lip nervously and averting his eyes. He probably thought she minded. And well, perhaps she should, really, because that was kind of weird of him, but she was sure it was well-intentioned. Probably. Right?

“Before you tried to get him to leave, I heard him say you were never going to publish anything in your life.”

Belle sat back and felt that twinge of pain in her stomach, heard Gaston’s voice as he’d said it in her mind. He’d said it in anger, but he knew it would hurt her. And it hurt her because secretly, on her worst days, she believed it, herself.

“And, well,” he continued when he saw that she’d sunk a little too far in her memory of that awful night to be much of a conversation partner, “I’m not sure if I agree, but people do still say that living well is the best revenge, yes?”

Belle felt a little smile tugging at her lips, and she said, “Yeah. They do.”

“I may have been out of line, there, but I wanted to give you a little push.”

“Strange way of going about it, but it worked,” she replied, shrugging.

“Strange ways are all I have, I’m afraid."

They exchanged looks for a moment as the TV cast a pale glow on his ghostly skin. He seemed a little vaguer, like he was fading away, and when he looked down at his own hands, it was like he’d noticed the exact same thing.

“Ah. I’m going to have to take my leave, Ms. French.”

“Dead battery?”

Oh, shit. Belle clasped her hand in front of her mouth and stared at him with wide eyes, hoping she hadn’t offended him with her stupid joke. _Empty_ was what she wanted to say! Empty, not dead! And even that was an awful joke! But he just looked at her in silence for a moment, until - thank God - his mouth curled into a great big smirk, and his shoulders shook up and down once or twice in silent laughter. Belle sighed and laughed, slumping back against the sofa in complete and utter relief.

“Something like that. I could work around it, but it’s late.”

Belle didn’t know what _it_ was, but she nodded understandingly regardless. He stood up, still fading, and right before he disappeared completely, Belle called out, “You’ll come back tomorrow, yeah?”

“I will. Put some ice on that arm.”

And he was gone. At least, she couldn’t see him.

“You’re not still here, are you?”

No answer.

“Cause that would be a little bit creepy, dude,” she sang, giggling softly to herself despite the fact that that would actually be _extremely_ creepy, wouldn’t it? And she had no way of knowing. There was silence, now. Whatever that meant.

It was only after another big mug full of wine and as she lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling, her vision unsteady and her arm throbbing painfully, that Belle had an ill-timed moment of clarity, right before sleep hit her like a sack of bricks.

Did she just befriend a ghost?


	3. The Devil Has Told You That!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle wakes up with a bit of a hangover and some serious doubts about the afterlife. Will her nameless ghost show up again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adore you guys. Thank you all so much. I honestly didn't mean for these chapters to get longer. Someone please stop me. Somehow. I don't know how. Oh God.
> 
> <3

A loud, incredibly annoying buzzing sound woke her up and tore her from deep, blissfully unaware sleep, mercilessly and irrevocably. Belle sat up straight in her bed and felt around for her phone, cursing under her breath. Her tongue felt like a piece of felt and her head weighed about a ton, and as she rolled over from her strange sprawled position on the bed to half hang over the edge so she could pick up her phone from the floor, her arm screamed in pain. God, she really should have put some ice on that.

_’Put some ice on that arm.’_

Oh. God. Last night. Flashes of deep brown eyes and an echo of that accent like two pebbles from the bottom of a pile of rocks - dislodging and sending every single stone in the world crashing down on top of Belle’s poor head.

A ghost. Or, yeah, the progression of some kind of congenital mental illness. She squinted at the screen. 10:32 am. Message from Ruby.

_Lunch at the diner?_

Well it wasn’t like she was going to text back _’No can do, stayed up too late drinking and talking to a ghost/persistent hallucination’_ , so Belle dragged herself out of bed and down from the mezzanine for a shower, after pouring two huge glasses of water down her throat. Dehydration was the enemy, and she’d let it get the upper hand last night. Yesterday’s skirt and a new top, fifteen minutes of work on an article on some terrible TV show one of the websites she was writing for wanted her to praise to high heavens, and out she went, braving the winds that had been whipping the town for days, now. It was like the storm had never really left. It wasn’t raining, and every once in a while the sun peeked through the clouds for a couple of seconds, but mostly it was clouds of varying shades of grey pushed on by a tireless, laboring wind.

It was a brisk fifteen minute walk to the diner, and Belle was glad she hadn’t put too much effort in her hair that morning, because the wind was wreaking absolute havoc on it. But it felt nice. Wasn’t clearing out her head completely, but it was beating the dullness out of it - that heavy constant thrum fading away just a little bit more with each strong gust so that when she walked into the diner and Ruby flew into her arms, her smile came easy and quick, and it was genuine.

“I’ve got thirty minutes. Burgers?”

“Yes, please!”

Burgers and a walk in windy weather. Perfect. Belle made a note of it for the next time she had a mild, easily preventable hangover that by rights she should probably endure so that perhaps she would learn her damn lesson and drink plenty of water before bed next time. They slid into a booth, waited, talked, ate.

“Rubes, do you believe in ghosts?” Belle asked, reaching over to wipe a smudge of lipstick from her friend’s face with the corner of her napkin. Gaston had always said that Belle was a messy eater, but she knew that she had nothing on Ruby.

“I don’t know. Probably not,” she replied, once her mouth was empty.

“Probably?”

“Well,” she started, pausing to take a sip from her coke, “you know how some people have this spooky anecdote, and that that was the thing that made them believe in ghosts?”

“Yeah, sure.” Belle’d have a damn good one once she was sure it hadn’t all been one massive stress-induced hallucination.

“Well, I’ve never had anything like that happen before. So I don’t know. Maybe if something weird happened that I couldn’t explain, I might start believing in that stuff, too.”

“So you don’t think people like that are insane?”

“Nah. Not insane. Do you?”

That was an important question, and Belle had been asking herself that for days, now.

“I don’t know. Some of them, maybe, but not all of them. A lot of people believe in ghosts and they couldn’t all be crazy. Imaginative, maybe?”

“Yeah, that’s probably got something to do with it. That, or ghosts actually exist. Maybe they’re just picky as to who gets to see them.”

Belle knew then that if she was going to tell anyone, it would be Ruby. Sweet, openminded, reasonable Ruby. But not now. It was time to broach that other subject and get this thing over with once and for all.

“Oh, by the way, I broke up with Gaston,” muttered Belle, shoving the last of her burger in her mouth and looking away from Ruby’s oncoming judgement.

“ _By the way?_ ”, she cried. “Belle, that’s huge!”

“Mhm,” she managed with her mouth full of burger. She chewed slowly to give herself some time to gather her words, but there was only so many times one could chew on a mouthful of cow before it became distasteful, so she swallowed, made a face and continued, “Weeks ago, actually, bu-”

“Weeks? What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were taking extra shifts, and it was right about the time you were moving, and I just didn’t want to bother you with it.”

“Oh my God, sweetie,” Ruby cooed, “I know I said I was busy, but you shouldn’t have gone through that alone!”

“I didn’t. Not really. I mean, my dad and I talked about it.”

“That’s not the same, and you know it.”

“I know, I know. I guess I just wanted to process it first.”

“I get that. Just… maybe don’t wait so long to tell me, next time something massive happens in you life?”

“Yeah. You’re right. I won’t. Promise.”

Ruby looked at her with more than a hint of skepticism, but when Belle gave her her most reassuring grin, she sat back in her chair and returned her smile.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay, I think. Better now that he’s stopped trying to make contact. He called my dad, too, by the way.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Yeah, didn’t even tell him we’d broken up. Just that we’d had an argument and that he was worried.”

“Wow. That’s messed up. What was he even trying to accomplish?”

“I don’t know, Rubes,” Belle sighed, sitting back.

“I knew he’d show his colors, eventually. I mean, calling your dad to try and get you back? He’s a dick.”

Belle smiled. That was the kindest way in which she could have said ‘I told you so!’, wasn’t it? And it was true; Ruby had never been a fan of Gaston’s, but her friend had had her own fair share of questionable romances, so she knew to stick to meaningful looks of disapproval and wait patiently for the haze of ill-placed affection to lift before breaking out the four letter insults.

“Fuck him,” she shrugged. “Figuratively. No breakup sex, okay? Take it from me, you don’t wanna go down that path.”

“Don’t worry,” Belle giggled, “I’m not tempted. At all.”

“That bad?”

“Meh,” she shrugged. Meh indeed. No other way to put it.

“Why the hell did you even stay with him for that long if even _that_ wasn’t worth the bother?”

“I liked him!”

And that was true. There wasn’t really a catalyst for their break up. No big fuck-up or disagreement. The relationship had just run its course. And then, like Ruby said, he’d shown his true colors, and Belle knew that she had made the right choice.

Belle stuck around for a little while longer to listen to Ruby’s treasure trove of tales of awful customers, giggling at her fiery defenses of the food. (“If you order the hottest chili and you can’t handle it, that’s on you. No sympathy, even if you do end up crying.”) But at some point during the conversation, Belle’s mind drifted to the night before.

She’d asked him to come back, hadn’t she? Same time tomorrow, she’d said, and he had agreed. If she had been hallucinating everything that had happened since she first saw a flash of that nameless ghost, then it would be highly unlikely that she would have that exact same hallucination (she could picture him now; those dark eyes and that broad grin) at that exact same time, unless whatever it was that was wrong with her brain was somehow connected to the time of day. Because hallucinations - that was the thing about them, really - can’t be controlled like that.

So, strangely, the thing to do would be to just wait until tonight and see if this nameless ghost of hers decided to keep his end of the bargain and pay her another visit. If he did, well then, the next step would be to find out if anyone else could see him. If not… then perhaps a trip to the doctor was in order.

But there was something behind that vague, thudding remnant of a headache. Veiled by that mist of boozy regret. Something she’d almost forgotten, but she knew she would remember if she just focused. Something about names. His name! If she had the outline to her story ready for him, he would let her name him.

With Ruby still chatting away, Belle checked the time on her phone and with a sudden pang of panic realized that if she wanted to get that outline ready for her still somewhat hypothetical ghost, she would have to rush home and get started. She didn’t even know what she wanted to name him, for God’s sake, but a deal was a deal, wasn’t it?

“Ruby, I’m so sorry, but I have to go.”

“That’s alright, sweetie!” she chimed. “I’m just happy we had the chance to catch up.”

They crawled out of the booth and hugged, and Ruby whispered, “Plus, my break ended like ten minutes ago.”

The wind was still whipping scarves and flags and branches, the whole town its personal plaything. Her back was a sail and it was pushing her home fast, making her feel light and nimble, and the last of her hangover lay down and left her be.

Home again, Belle lay prone on the wooden floor, surrounded by some old children’s books that she’d kept all these years, the contents of her upturned pencil box scattered around her like some sort of strange stationary shop explosion aftermath, and she scribbled furiously. She’d started on the desk, but there wasn’t enough room for the mess she was making, so she’d relocated to the floor. She threw her thoughts onto the paper and tried to make some sort of sense of it all, circling words and connecting them, color coding things and forgetting what the color meant (so basically just coloring things) and slowly forming her idea.

It was still that little girl who had trouble going to sleep at night, because she couldn’t stop wondering about the strange, scary shadows she saw. More curious than frightened. Maybe a little stubborn and hasty. What if the monster in her closet was more scared of her than she of it? She’d try to get the monster to come out, laying out candy and toys in front of the closet and always keeping a little night light on, but she’d only see a shadowy claw reaching out to take the occasional toy car or cupcake.

Yeah. Maybe she could make something of that.

She sat up and curled her legs up, leaning back with a little smile, her hands supporting her weight. Ghost or no, it had been ages since she’d made an actual effort to write something that was just for her. Something that if she tended to it carefully, let it grow and blossom, perhaps she could show to the world. And even if this turned out to be a dead end, well then, at least she would have had this moment to look back on. A sudden burst of creativity was never for nothing. It was never just lost.

Her leg was asleep, her muscles ached, her butt on that wooden floor was starting to object, so she shifted to sit on her knees for a moment so she could shift through the mess of papers she’d made. A quick glance at the clock told her she’d been working for hours, now, though it didn’t feel like it. At some point, she’d gotten up to stick a frozen pizza in the oven, and she could smell it now. Good thing, cause she’d forgotten to set the timer.

So she ate (and burned the roof of her mouth just a little bit, as always) and tried to clear up the mess on the floor at the same time. A slice of mushroom slipped from her pizza and onto one of the books she’d brought down from the mezzanine for inspiration, and she cursed softly under her breath. God, she was a mess.

It was her favorite, too. The cover was half torn off and some of the pages stuck together because she’d been spilling her food on that book since she was five years old, but Belle couldn’t imagine ever throwing it out. With the slice of pizza between her teeth, she scrambled up from the floor with the book and rushed to grab a paper towel, and as she was wiping off the tomato sauce with a look of pure concentration on her face, the reality of the situation welled up like a freezing wave and crashed over her, leaving her cold and drenched to the bone in the sudden realization that she was _waiting for a ghost_.

Waiting for a ghost to show up at an agreed to time, no less, and prove she wasn’t losing her mind. Actually _hoping_ that he’d show up, so that she wouldn’t have to make a damn doctor’s appointment, because her convoluted reasoning had told her that figments of one’s imagination can’t keep a schedule.

Some sound reasoning, there. And now she was nervous. She’d spent so much time scribbling out her outline, she hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten. The thing was, even though she could remember asking the ghost to come back at the same time, she couldn’t really remember when exactly he had shown up yesterday (thanks, wine) so now she was unarmed against the relentless waves of doubt and anxiety. If she’d known when he was supposed to show up, she could brace herself. Damn.

A knock on the door. Was her music too loud again? She rushed to her iPod, paused the playlist and went up to the door to peek through the peephole, her hands pressed up against the door.

Nothing. Nothing she could see, anyway. Maybe it was Alicia from down the hall, that adorable little girl who was small for her age but ever so clever. She liked to play tricks every so often. It was rather late for her to be up and about, but Belle opened the door to make sure, anyway.

“I wonder who’s there!” she sang, but her smile was replaced with a blank look when it became clear that there was no-one. Not even little Alicia, hiding just out of view.

She really should not have been that surprised to hear that familiar voice rather close, saying, “It’s me.”

“Oh good God!” she whispered, startled but still too mindful of her long suffering neighbors to allow herself to yelp or scream. She backed away from the door but kept it open for some reason, even though she knew very well he could probably move right through it, no problem. But since he’d knocked…

“Did I startle you?” he asked. His voice was nearer, now, and she knew she could close the door behind her. (Well, again, she could have done that with him still out in the hall.)

“I didn’t expect you to knock,” she admitted, “so yeah, a bit.”

And there he was, slowly beginning to take form. That glowing sepia color first, with no definition to his face or clothes, but then the colors came, and he began to look a little more solid until finally she could see his face.

“Ah. That’s unfortunate,” said the ghost, running a hand through his hair nervously. “I thought it would be less jarring than had I just appeared in the middle of your living room again.”

“But I was expecting you to just… hop on in again,” replied Belle with an equally nervous giggle.

She was a little mesmerized by the way he’d run his fingers through his hair just then; it was so real. So detailed. The laws of physics seemed to apply to him there, even though the rest of him didn’t really seem to have any mass. When he’d sat down on her sofa last night, it was like he was hovering over it. No indentation at all. Would it be rude to ask him what was up with that? Would he even know?

“You do like to stare, don’t you?”

“Sorry!” she cried, spinning around a bit too hurriedly in order to spare him her insistent gaze. “I’m so sorry. Still not used to this.”

“It’s alright. I understand. I’m just teasing, dearie. Mostly.”

You would think that the second time around, it would be a little less uncomfortable, but there they were again, just standing around, powerless to ignore their shared silences like big, ugly, useless monuments dedicated to awkward conversation dotting the landscape of whatever the hell kind of strange new social situation this was.

“I’d offer you something to drink, but, uh…” she let the sentence trail off.

“I appreciate the offer, but it would be easier just to pour a glass of wine straight onto your sofa.”

“I figured,” she giggled, settling herself onto the couch, patting the space next to her.

Again he moved without sound, and when he sat down all the way down on the other side of the sofa, the fabric didn’t shift one bit. He sat with his back straight and his hands on his thighs, and he looked for all the world a nervous little school boy. Oh, yes; she was trying not to stare.

When words failed Belle, she wasn’t ashamed to resort to stating the obvious in order to keep a conversation going, which is why she coughed to clear her throat of some imagined obstruction and said, “So, you came.”

“I’ve not got much else on,” he replied darkly. “And I did say I would.”

Another moment of awkward silence, and Belle was just about ready to start asking some very personal questions out of desperation, when suddenly she remembered their deal.

“Ah, yes, the thing… the outline! It’s got to be here somewhere,” she muttered, dropping down from the sofa to her knees to shift through the pile of papers she’d been scribbling on that afternoon and evening. She’d picked them all up from the floor and put them on the coffee table.

“It’s not definite, but then outlines are never supposed to be, you know?” she babbled on, unaware that she was pretty much tossing everything onto the floor again. “A general idea of what should happen in your story is always good, but you shouldn’t chain yourself to a particular end, right?” Behind her she could vaguely hear the sound of a muffled snicker, but she was too focused on finding that one piece of paper that _should_ have been right at the top but wasn’t, to really register it.

“Ah! Got it!”

And back on the sofa she flew, sitting closer than she had before. For practical reasons. But she was nervous about it, because he was so flighty, wasn’t he? And sure enough, even though she wasn’t nearly close enough to accidentally touch him (was that even possible?) he inched himself a little further away. But Belle decided to pretend not to notice. Instead, she held the paper out to him and stole a sneaky sideways glance at his face.

His eyes moved over the paper but he made no move to hold it. A vaguely translucent face is hard to read, Belle had discovered in the last couple of days, but now that she was sitting closer, it was easier. His eyes were dark and focused, his lips pressed together in a straight line, except for a hint of a smile that lasted less than a second but didn’t escape Belle’s attentive gaze.

When he sat back and looked at her, Belle drew back her hands and put the sheet of paper in her lap. His eyes seemed to be flitting over her face just as they had over the outline a moment ago, and he wet his lips with his tongue and said, “Alright.”

Huh.

“Alright?”

“You’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain.”

He wasn’t going to tell her what he thought about her idea? Was it that bad? She didn’t mind criticism, but this strange non-statement of his let her imagination unleash the worst possible criticisms on herself.

“But what do you think?”

“Does it matter? Are dead men your target audience, then?” he scoffed.

Belle couldn’t help herself from narrowing her eyes at him in a controlled glare. It seemed to soften his smug look into something a little less defiant. It was interesting to see how this man couldn’t seem to decide whether to be an ass or not, and amusing to see how her obvious disapproval could sway him.

He swallowed, shrugged, sat back and muttered, “It’s interesting. Not a lot there to judge, but I’d say it would make for an interesting story if you expand it.”

There. Was that really so hard? Belle smiled and offered a cheery, victorious “ _Thank_ you,” and he looked away again, glueing his eyes to the mess she’d made trying to find that single sheet of paper. Her old book of fairy tales was just about the only thing she hadn’t knocked to the floor. Whatever, she’d pick all of that up later.

She had a deal to claim.

“And now I can name you, right?”

“If you must,” he sighed dramatically, drawing his hand through the air in an accentuating flourish.

“I do have an idea, but it’s a bit silly, maybe,” she said, glancing at that book on the table.

“Try me.”

Belle curled her legs up under her, smoothed her skirt down. He raised an eyebrow and folded his arms.

“You said you didn’t need a name because you have one already, right?”

“Correct.”

“And I agree. Just because you can’t remember it, doesn’t mean that it’s not yours. So what if I just give you a nickname?”

He jerked his head back and gave her the most comical look of confusion Belle had ever seen; his brow deeply furrowed and his lips twisted in an exaggerated frown.

“How could you possible give me a nickname if you don’t know my name?”

“Well, nicknames don’t necessarily have to be based on your actual name, right?”

“Oh,” he said softly, the lines in his face smoothing out to leave him with a thoughtful look. “I suppose not.”

“They can just be based on a character trait, or an inside joke, or a physical resemblance,” explained Belle.

“Yes, yes, alright. Where are you going with this? I’m starting to get nervous.”

Oh, this was ridiculous. It was ridiculous and it would always be ridiculous, and if she said it out loud, then, she could never take it back, and this moment would always exist somewhere in the space-time continuum as being completely bloody ridiculous, until the universe snapped back like a rubber band and reset itself.

She took a deep breath.

“Rumpelstiltskin.”

Oh, God. Yes. That sounded ridiculous. She forced herself to hold his gaze, which had a little bit of that earlier confusion still, but subdued, now. Genuine, now. At least he didn’t seem angry?

“… Rumpelstiltskin?”

No anger in his voice, either. Not even mockery.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she confirmed, adding, “Rumple for short.”

“Rumple,” he repeated, trilling the R in a way that made Belle grin. “As in, the fairy tale character who made a deal for someone’s firstborn child?”

“Well, yes but that’s not… Alright, okay, bear with me here,” Belle started, and he nodded with a contained grin of amusement, “Rumpelstiltskin in the original German is Rumpelstilzchen. Did you know that?”

“I was not aware of that, no,” he lilted. Was he laughing at her? Trying not to?

“Well, I’m not sure what it was exactly, but it means something along the lines of little rattle stilt.”

“Does it, now?” he teased.

“Yeah!” Oh, he was definitely mocking her now. She could hear his laughter hiding just underneath his voice. But it seemed good-natured, and she had to admit her idea was a little bit out there, so that was alright. “And a rumpelstilz was a kind of mischievous spirit who likes to knock and rattle planks and poles and stuff like that, to make a lot of noise.”

“Ohh, I think I see where you’re going with this, now.”

“Like a poltergeist. Only… very specifically with poles, for some reason,” she said, shrugging and scrunching her nose.

“And since I’m a ghost,” he offered, allowing her to finish the sentence.

“I just think it fits. Don’t you think? It sounds nice, too. And this way, it being a nickname, it’s not like you’ll be replacing your real name.”

His grin, handsome though it was, was making her feel a little odd. Beaming from ear to ear, looking at her as if she was a bumbling puppy or an endearing fool.

“You think it’s ridiculous,” she said, nodding to herself. She knew that. She hadn’t had the time to think up something else, and when she saw that book of hers and remembered looking up the origins of that tale. She was surprised to see that she’d remembered all of that etymological stuff, though. When had she looked all of that up? Years ago, surely.

“Of course I do! It’s preposterous. Absurd.”

See? Ridiculous.

“But I like it.”

“You do?”

Oh, thank heavens.

“Sure. But why do you care? If you’d settled on Vanessa, I’d have accepted that, too.”

“Really?”

“I never break a deal, dearie.”

“… Oh my God,” Belle said, her grin growing wider until she couldn’t ignore the humor of the situation and began to giggle.

“What?” he almost spat, that baffled look on his face that she was beginning to love back in full force.

“Know who else didn’t break his deal?”

“Who- oh. Oh alright, Rumpelstiltskin, sure,” he said in a low voice, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

“So, Rumple,” she started. But she stopped herself, because what she was going to say was ‘You must get lonely,’ but Belle decided there and then that asking questions of a ghost you wouldn’t ask an actual, corporeal person you just met, was probably just as rude. So instead, she went with, “What do you do all day?” which was tons better.

“Oh, not much,” he said, waving his hands in a dismissive gesture. “I, uh. I have… borrowed a book on occasion.”

“To The Lighthouse, by any chance? I can’t find that one anymore.”

“No, no. Not yours,” he clarified. Oh. Too bad. She really wanted to give it another read. “I only borrow books from people who wouldn’t notice if they’ve gone missing.”

“I have tons of books! Why would you think I’d notice if you took one?”

“Because you actually read them, dearie.”

Ah. That made sense. She did do a lot of reading, and she did often revisit an old favorite.

“What else do you do? Do you spy on people?”

“No!” he cried, his hands flying up in the air, as if that would make his innocence abundantly clear.

“I would!” Belle laughed, but he kept shaking his head in fierce denial.

At this point, if it had been Ruby sitting there, or any real life person, Belle would have reached out and lightly touched their arm or leg, just to reassure them. It was something she did without thinking about it, but this time she found herself snapping her arm back a nanosecond after she’d thoughtlessly lifted it to do just that. Instead, she smiled and hoped that that would be enough to put him at ease.

Because she’d meant it. If she had the power to make herself invisible and move through walls and doors, she would have enough self restraint to not spy on people for oh, about two days, maybe? But then, the temptation would just be way too strong. And he - Rumple; he had a name now - Rumple’s situation was different from her hypothetical superpower scenario. He could turn visible, sort of, but he could never pretend to be… well… She was hesitant to say ‘human’, because in what sense was this slightly nervous, sometimes acerbic, fully articulate man sitting next to her on the sofa _not_ completely human?

The point being, watching people live their lives might be all this man had, and Belle was not one to judge too harshly.

“Alright, alright,” he muttered. “I might… make the rounds every once in a while. See what’s happening. But not in a creepy way, you know. Not with any… intentions.”

He made a strange, scrunched up face when he said that last word, and Belle found herself giggling. He was so expressive. Yes, he was human. Just a different kind of human, that was all.

“But you have to understand, I’m not always… around,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure exactly. It’s like sleeping, I suppose. Not quite, but that’s the closest I can get to explaining it to you.”

“So you haven’t always been… ‘awake,’ then?”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “I drift in and out.”

“And when you get back, you read other people’s books and chase out their stubborn ex-boyfriends,” Belle mused with a little grin.

“Precisely,” Rumple replied, inclining his head as if taking a little seated bow.

“Don’t you ever leave?”

“ _Leave_? This building?”

“Sure! Take a walk?”

“I’m a ghost, dearie,” he laughed bitterly. “I haunt this place.”

“But do you know why?”

He looked away, and Belle could see his jaw clench, but for some reason, she didn’t take that as a sign that perhaps she should change the subject.

“I don’t know. Perhaps I worked here,” he muttered.

“That makes sense. But you’re Scottish, right? Your clothes don’t look that old-fashioned, so maybe-”

He was up from the sofa before she could finish her sentence.

“I told you, I don’t know,” he said tersely through his clenched teeth, his words like daggers, sharp in her ears, making her cringe and draw her legs closer to her body.

Oh God, what had she done? Minutes ago she’d told herself she wasn’t going to ask him those kinds of questions, and here she was asking a man about his own death. Not directly, but she knew what her questions were leading to, and apparently, so did he.

He looked surprised. Shocked at himself, somehow. His eyes were wide, his lips parted. He blinked a few times, then tore his eyes away from hers and offered her a softly spoken, “I apologize, Ms. French.” She saw him fade just a little bit, and the sight made her stomach flip. “Please don’t leave.”

“Why?” he asked.

He looked sad, now, with his eyebrows knitted together and his dark eyes too unsure to really look her in the eye, and Belle wanted to reach out and pull him back down onto the sofa.

“Because I like talking with you.”

“You shouldn’t. You invited me into your home, and I just snapped at you.”

“Barely,” Belle replied in a low, teasing tone. “Ghosts don’t scare me, anyway. Even if they’re grumpy.”

He looked at her with an illegible look, and Belle swallowed. But then his lips twisted into a smile, and he sat himself down to sit cross-legged at her coffee table. What on earth? He shifted through the sheets of paper and picked one she hadn’t really written anything on, just some crossed out words, then reached for a pen that had rolled under the coffee table.

“What are you doing?”

“The little girl in your story,” he started, glancing up briefly from whatever it was that he was writing, “what does she look like?”

Oh. She hadn’t actually given that any thought, but… She’d been picturing little Alicia, who loved to read. That’s why the pair of them got along so well. She liked to read, and she was clever and brave, and if anyone would want to draw a monster out of her closet, it would be her.

“Have you seen that little girl with the black braids around? Cute little hair clips? She’s so precious. Big beautiful brown eyes, kind of like yours, but darker. Gorgeous smile.”

“Wee lass, lives down the hall? About eight?”

“She’s ten, actually! But yes, that’s her. Alicia. That’s who I’m picturing.”

“I’ve seen her running about the place, causing trouble. She’s adorable,” he agreed with a little nod.

Then he lowered his head again, his hair falling in front of his face, and returned his attention to the paper. She watched the pen move as he held it between his fingers, heard it scratch against the paper. So he could hold things? That was interesting. Well, he did throw a bunch of stuff at her ex-boyfriend, after all, so she supposed she shouldn’t have been that surprised.

What on earth was he doing, though? Belle sat back and watched him in silence for about a minute, but then curiosity got the better of her, and she moved up from where she was sitting to join him on the floor, and when he moved his hand away to let her see, the sight rendered her speechless.

He’d drawn her little girl. The little girl from her story. And it was gorgeous.

He’d sketched her sitting up in her bed on her hands and knees, crawling towards the edge of the bed, because that’s where the closet was. And from inside the closet came a dark, shadowy claw, reaching out for a little toy car she’d left in front of it.

“That’s amazing!” she gasped. Again she had this impulse to reach out and touch him, grab his arm and squeeze it in a childish, inarticulate attempt to make him feel the absolute joy of seeing her words come alive like that.

“Just a sketch,” he muttered, but from the corner of her eye (she really couldn’t stop staring at her little girl and her monster) she spotted a shy but pleased smile.

“Thank you, Rumple,” Belle said. God, the more she said it, the more she loved it. That nickname was perfect.

But when she turned to show him her brightest, most grateful smile, he was already almost gone, and her smile fell from her face, leaving her looking the very picture of disappointment.

“Am I fading again?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t made myself visible in a long time. Must be out of practice,” he murmured.

“You’ll keep practicing, won’t you?” She could barely see his face anymore, just the brick wall behind him and a hint of his features, but she could still see that he hadn’t understood, so she clarified, “I mean, you’ll be back tomorrow, yeah?”

“Would you like me to?”

“Of course!”

“Alright, then.”

“Good night, Rumple.”

“Good night.”

And he was gone. She could feel it, now. He wasn’t just invisible - he wasn’t in the room. She couldn’t pin down exactly what it was, but now that she’d felt it for a few hours the past two days, she knew. It felt different when he was there with her. Maybe it was that thing the people often talked about, that thing she didn’t understand, that feeling of being watched. Of not being alone. The opposite of that, maybe?

Her gaze landed on that piece of paper, and she smiled and picked it up. This was incredible, really. With only a few pen strokes, he’d made her story so much more real. And there was something nostalgic about the whole thing. The girl’s cute little night gown was something you didn’t see these days. And that toy car was just so sweet. Even though he’d sketched it so quickly, she could see the spokes of the wheels. It almost looked like a carriage.

She took it up with her as she went to bed, put it on the night stand next to her. Maybe she’d buy a frame for it tomorrow, and see if she couldn’t figure out what kind of car that was. Maybe he’d driven one of those himself? Or played with the toy version? Tomorrow was Thursday, and she had nothing else to do for the rest of the week, anyway. Except wait for the no-longer-nameless ghost to come back.

And as she curled up under the covers and heard the wind sing as it raced around the building, Rumple’s proud little smile was the last thing she saw in her mind’s eye before sleep came to carry her away.


	4. Physical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another haunted night for Belle and her friendly ghost as they try to get to know each other a little better. Belle finds the courage to ask a few questions she wouldn't have asked before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 Did you know you're all really amazing? Cause you are. Just saying. Thank you.

Belle stood in front of her bathroom mirror and tried to ignore the little voice in the back of her head telling her there was no need to reapply her make-up. It was a loud, persistent little voice, but her music was louder and had managed to drown that same voice out when it asked her why exactly this was the occasion to try out her new dress, so it was alright.

She’d spent the day doing some awful paid writing, then headed out to look for a picture frame for that gorgeous sketch Rumple had drawn her. She’d taken a picture of the toy car and mailed that to her father, asking him if he knew what kind of car it was. No response yet. After that, she’d had another look at her story and jotted down a few more ideas.

She’d decided that the little girl, for whom she hadn’t yet settled on a name, would eventually bravely venture into the closet with her favorite toys and a bunch of saved up treats, after numerous failed attempts to lure out the monster. From there on out, well, she wasn’t sure, yet.

But she knew she’d get there.

First things first, though: Rumple. She smiled to herself and silently mouthed his name. (Well, nickname.) God, it was absolutely ridiculous, but she loved it still. Belle was surprised that he hadn’t outright told her to piss off with a name as silly as that, but it seemed like what she’d said about his real name being lost but not gone really resonated with him.

Maybe he’d remember some day.

She moved around the apartment, clearing away the mess of papers and books she’d made last night and neglected to take care of all day long. Last night, she’d been too nervous, too uncertain about this entire ghost situation to realize that, as with any other sort of social call, one might be expected to tidy up a bit before visitors arrive.

Last night’s sudden understanding that this ghost - Rumple - was in all ways but the physical so, _so_ human had come to her clearly and definite. Because he’d sat there, and he was just as nervous as her, if not more. He’d smiled, he’d laughed, he’d joked, he’d even gotten annoyed when she unwittingly found a sore spot, for which he’d apologized. And then he’d drawn for her. God, he could draw.

He was a man with feelings, thoughts and skills. There was no doubt in her mind, then, that it was silly - if not insulting - to think of him as inhuman.

Which, unfortunately, meant that she had to tidy up.

Ghost was such a strange word. It was definitely what he was, but Belle couldn’t help but think of all the ways in which the word was used as she washed the dishes (take-out again but at least she’d put it on a plate this time) slowly, absently, taking a little too long for just a single plate. The ghost of a chance. A ghost of his former self. That sort of thing. It all implied that there was a lack of something, and not just the physical, which, you know, fair enough; he was different in that way. Completely incorporeal? She wasn’t sure yet. Different, though. Definitely. She wasn’t going to deny that.

But perhaps ‘spirit’ suited him better.

A glass of wine, maybe. She’d been so incredibly nervous talking to him these past two nights - at least at the beginning of their encounters. Maybe it would help. Just a glass or two, though. Didn’t want to start asking him the really awkward questions. She didn’t know which ones those were, but she was sure she’d stumble upon them with her foot in her mouth if she didn’t retain some self-control.

The dishes were done, the papers were cleared away (or at least relocated to one big pile right next to the television) and her wine was poured. What else? Oh, the lights! The string lights! The place looked so much better with those casting their warm glow on all of her cozy clutter. Made everything feel that much softer, too. She plugged them all in; the ones around the railing at the top of the mezzanine, the ones draped over her stacks of books opposite her bed, too (made taking a book from a pile a bit of a nightmare, but it was worth it - it looked so pretty) and then the ones by the windows.

Belle sighed, wrapped her arms around herself and looked around the room. Yup. That was the least messy it would ever get.

This time, the knock on the door didn’t catch her by surprise, and the strange sight of absolutely nothing through the peephole was not so strange at all. Belle grinned, opened the door and stepped back to let Rumple through.

“Good evening, Ms. French.”

Jeez. A bit formal still, wasn’t he? Was that a remnant of the social conventions of his time? Whichever time that was.

“Good evening, Mr. Stiltskin,” she replied, embarrassment setting in not even half-way through her sentence, but she thought she could hear a soft laugh as he entered the room, so perhaps it wasn’t that awful a joke.

“I didn’t know whether to knock again this time,” he said. His voice was heading towards the sofa, and when she turned to look, she saw him taking form again. As before, that strange undefined glowing sepia color came first, then some definition and a little less translucency followed. “We didn’t discuss the matter any further, did we?”

“It’s okay! Knocking’s fine,” she assured him, waving her hand.

Where was her wine? She whipped her head around, looked a little bit lost until she found it on the counter.

“Do you mind if I finish this glass?” she called from the kitchen, shooting him an uncertain smile over her shoulder. “Again, I’d offer, but… You know.”

“It’s alright,” he replied. He was almost solid, now. Well, as solid as he had ever been. He was still not completely ‘there.’ “Wouldn’t dream of getting in the way of a good glass of red.”

He seemed and sounded a little less nervous tonight. That was good. The glass in her hand, Belle leaned back against the counter and took a sip.

“I see you’ve decided to go with a wine glass, this time.”

“Hm?”

He blinked at her, scanned her face for something, then showed a tentative grin.

“First time we spoke,” he clarified. “You were, rather creatively I thought, drinking it from a coffee mug.”

“Oh! Yes!” she said, trying not to giggle in embarrassment. She’d almost forgotten about that disaster. “But I wasn’t expecting company then, was I?”

“I’m flattered you consider me worth the bother,” he replied, his grin a little wider, inclining his head in another little bow. If he kept being this endearing, she’d never stop giggling.

But… he wasn’t sitting down. _Oh_ , he wasn’t sitting down! Wasn’t that a thing? To wait for the women in the room to sit down? He was stood there, his hands behind his back, his tongue flicking out to moisten his lips nervously, and there she was babbling away and keeping the poor man from sitting down. Sheesh, but how old was he? Well, he seemed about 50, but how old was he really, that he would seriously still adhere to that notion of propriety? She was half tempted to wait and see how long he’d stand around for, but Belle knew that she’d sooner look like an idiot than he, seeing as how he wasn’t really standing and couldn’t tire as she could; he was hovering. At least, she’d never actually heard his footsteps, so that’s what she assumed he did.

So with her glass in hand, Belle crossed the distance to the living area and sat down on the sofa, once again patting the space next to her so that he wouldn’t sit all the way over in the armchair. He obliged, but settled in the complete opposite corner again, as far from her as he could.

Fair enough. They were still getting to know each other.

She curled up her legs and leaned her arm on the back rest so she could fully face him, and gave him her most reassuring smile.

“You’re very polite."

He frowned in confusion, then asked, “Am I?”

“Mm,” she replied, nodding. “Very proper. It’s rather impressive.”

“Well. I think we could use all the structure we can get in these strange circumstances. Don’t you?”

“You’re right,” she agreed, her eyes straying to his lips as they slowly began to form a smile. “This isn’t exactly a normal situation. More like the premise of a terrible joke,” she added. “A Scottish ghost and an Australian librarian walk into a bar, et cetera.”

He smirked, nodded enthusiastically and said, “And then something about high spirits, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed, giggling. Belle was beyond thrilled that _he_ had been the one to break out the ghost puns. “I can’t think of an Australian librarian pun right now, but I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Ah, yes, your antipodean roots,” he said. “Would you mind if I asked you when you came here?”

“From Australia, you mean?”

He nodded.

“I was twelve.”

“And you didn’t bother ditching the formidable accent?” he asked, his tone just the slightest bit teasing.

“Oh, is it that obvious?” she replied grimly, rolling her eyes. She knew her accent stood out like a sore thumb in this town, but then again, so did his. He must have known what it felt like, though, so she didn’t mind him bringing it up.

“I never really bothered trying to tone it down,” Belle shrugged. “I got teased for it, but I never let anyone bully me into changing myself.”

“Admirable.”

“I don’t know about that. People often still think I’m a tourist. Probably should have at least practiced in secret so I can switch when I don’t feel like answering questions,” she mused. “If I try to pull off a vaguely American accent, I sound like I’m having a stroke.”

He was silent for a while and she couldn’t feel her bloody heart beat for a terrifying moment until a bright grin broke through his mask, and he laughed, flooding relief into the room like a sudden gust of cool wind on a hot day. Oh, thank God. What if he’d died of a stroke? God, she was blindly waltzing through a cause-of-death minefield, here!

“I take it you moved here with your parents, then?”

Ah. There it was. The question that always nudged a little pin stuck in her heart and turned her smile a bit more melancholy. Sooner or later, with any new acquaintance, the subject would always come up.

“Just my father and I,” Belle said softly, swallowing a familiar lump in her throat. “After my mother passed away.”

He was silent - just looked at her with a few more lines etched in his forehead, and gave her a small nod to tell her he was still listening.

“He thought it would be better to move somewhere completely new and start over.”

“And was it?”

“Overall, it probably was. Moving to a different country was huge. Kept you busy. You couldn’t just keep thinking about the pain.”

“That makes sense.”

“But sometimes it’s good to feel that sadness, you know? And that’s difficult when you’re so far away from the memories. Good and bad. Sometimes it’s good to remember, even if it hurts.”

She could tell there was something he wanted to say. He drew his lip between his teeth for a moment, nodded but looked down at his lap in thought.

“You don’t agree?” asked Belle.

“Ah. No, I understand. I just don’t know whether it’s innately good to subject ourselves to these things when we don’t necessarily have to.”

“Pain, you mean?”

“Mhm.”

They fell silent. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed shut. The wind howled outside her windows. Her refrigerator hummed. The wine was sour in her mouth but warm in her limbs. He would know about pain, wouldn’t he? Everything about him screamed old wounds, screamed hidden heartache, but sang of infinite kindness, too.

But she’d always had the tendency to romanticize. What could she possibly know about this man that he hadn’t told her?

He was the one to break the silence, clearing his throat with a cough and asking her, “And this building. When did you move here?”

“About two years ago.”

“With…”

He’d trailed off, made some sort of gesture with his hand as if that somehow spelled out the name ‘Gaston.’ She’d understood.

“No,” she said with a little smile, shaking her head. “We weren’t together for that long. Plus, he never lived here.”

“I see.”

“Well, he didn’t pay rent, at least,” she added in a low mutter.

Rumple snorted, and looked away as if he’d massively embarrassed himself somehow. How cute. Perhaps it was her turn to ask questions, now. Only fair, right? And he didn’t seem as jumpy as the night before, so with that little bit of wine in her system, Belle decided that it would be okay.

“I know you don’t remember much about yourself, but when did you last… Well, you said you drifted in and out, yeah?”

“That’s right,” he nodded.

“When did you last come back?”

“Two or three months ago, I think. It’s difficult to keep track of time.”

“And did you sleep for long that time, or…”

“Ah, that’s why I asked you when you moved in, actually. You were the only new tenant when I woke up.”

“So… at least two years, then?”

“At least,” he agreed.

The conversation stilled again, because really, they’d gone as far back into his past as they could, hadn’t they? He seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he shrugged, offered her an apologetic half smile and said, “Very imbalanced, isn’t it? This conversation? I know more about you than you do about me.”

“That’s okay,” Belle offered with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll admit I’m curious about you, but we’ve got plenty of other things to talk about, still.”

“Do we?”

Belle nodded and poured the last of her glass of wine down the hatch, scrunching up her face at the sour taste; it really made her skin crawl sometimes. Was he laughing at her? He had his hand in front of his mouth for a moment, but she could tell he was smiling. Those eyes of his were deceptive like that. Dark, but not impenetrable. (Literally translucent, too, but that was beside the point.)

She gave him a knowing smirk to let him know that he wasn’t being nearly subtle enough with his mockery, then asked him “You said you look in on people sometimes, didn’t you?”

Well that wiped the smile right off of his face. Amusing though it was to see the panic rise in Rumple’s eyes at the mere mention of it, Belle hastened to add, “Not with any weird intentions, I know.”

“Then yes,” he replied. “Occasionally.”

“Any good anecdotes?” Belle asked, leaning in and smiling a conspiratorial smile.

“Actually, you’d be surprised how dull the average person is,” he mumbled, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other.

“Dull? Really?”

“Eat, sleep, all the other necessities,… That’s it, honestly. That’s all anyone ever does when they’re at home.”

“Come on. You must have witnessed something funny or strange.”

“Not that I can recall,” said Rumple, shaking his head. “The kitten in the flat below yours is a lot more entertaining than the average tenant, here.”

“Seriously?” she giggled. “You and the kitten, good mates?”

She was entirely too giggly for having drunk only one glass of wine, but she couldn’t imagine that there was a single person in the world who wouldn’t find the idea of a ghost striking up a friendship with a kitten the most adorable and amusing thing ever.

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t think Bobo likes me. He does that thing where his fur stands on end whenever I’m in the room.”

“ _Bobo_? And he can see you?”

“Don’t give me that look,” he warned with a low chuckle. “I didn’t name the wee fuzzball. As for whether he can see me, I don’t know. But he must know I’m there, somehow.”

“Cats are strange.”

“More of a dog person, myself,” he said, nodding. “But he’s good fun to watch when you’ve not got much else on. He likes to knock things to the floor. Keeps Mrs. Adams nice and busy.”

Mrs. Adams! That was right! She’d run into her in the hallway about a year ago and introduced herself, then promptly forgot all about her. She didn’t know about the kitten, though. Were pets even allowed?

Softly, the rain began to tap on her window. She glanced over Rumple’s shoulder and saw little droplets of water clinging to the window pane. He looked over his shoulder, too, and Belle wasn’t sure what it was about that moment, but it was nothing like the uncomfortable silences they’d braved together so far.

This moment, as they stared at the rain knocking quietly against the glass, meant something. She could feel it. It was difficult to put into words, but it was important, and it was good. She bit her lip, willed the words to come, and just as she was about to give up, they came to her freely and caused her to sigh softly in relief.

Because this moment meant that they were together in this world. He was as much here as she, as that window, as the rain, as the glass in her hand. He was here to notice the sound, to want to turn towards it to make sure, even though really, what else could it be? You hear rain, you turn to see it. Just to be sure. That was the human thing to do. And so they were two perceiving entities, their senses pointed at a single point in their shared reality, like a string hung from her chest to the window, and then another one from the window back to his. It connected them. And in that moment, if there had been any suspicion left in her mind that what she was experiencing here was a hallucination, the rain had just washed it away.

They were both as real as the rain.

And the moment broke into pieces, as all moments do. He turned back to face her, and offered her a smile that made her think that he’d felt it too. It spurred her on to push him a little further and ask him some more questions.

“If you’ve been awake for a few months now, and you know my name, you must know some other things about me,” she said, her voice deeper, softer. The burning curiosity was just too much - she had to ask. “So what have you learned about me so far?”

He froze in place, his eyes wide for a moment until he caught himself and blinked furiously. Deer in the headlights. Ghost on her sofa.

“It’s okay, Rumple. I’m just curious.”

He seemed easier to reassure now that she could properly address him in some way. Just goes to show the importance of a name, right? Slowly, Rumple moved to sit a little bit like she was, an elbow on the back rest, one leg almost drawn up. They faced each other properly now.

“You write,” he said. True. “You don’t know how to cook.” Also true. That’s why her fridge was a wasteland. “You can’t sing, but that doesn’t stop you.”

“You heard me sing?” she cried, slapping her hands to her cheeks, fairly close to mortified.

“I heard you try!”

“Hey, now! Come on!” she sputtered in mock dismay. “And after I complimented your politeness, too!”

“I’m polite, dearie, not deaf,” he teased. “Unfortunately.”

It felt good to sit here laughing with this man. His smirk was gorgeous, and for the second time, Belle was struck with how handsome he was. Not in a conventional way, of course. Not your garden variety hunk. Just a handsome man who could probably charm the pants off of anyone if he just set his mind to it.

Her mind was going to places she really didn’t think appropriate. The wine would make for a halfway decent excuse, maybe, if she could pretend she’d drunk more than one glass in the morning, but she felt brave, and giddy, and excited in his presence, and Belle was ever so curious to see if there were any buttons she could push. You know. Just for fun.

“So,” she said, licking her lips first to help that sudden dryness in her mouth. “You didn’t accidentally drop by while I was changing, did you?”

“No!” he cried, shaking his head furiously, his hair swinging this way and that, his eyes wide as could be. Yeah, that was definitely worth it. “No, never!

“Or as I was asleep? Just hovering, creeping about?” she teased.

“No!”

“In the shower?” she added for good measure.

“Ms. French, I assure you I would never-”

He cut off his sentence abruptly when he finally noticed that she was trying not to laugh and slowly beginning to lose the battle as her lips, pressed together in a thin line, began to move on their own accord, and even her teeth’s grip on her bottom lip wasn’t enough to stop her grin from breaking through and betraying herself.

“I can’t help it, Rumple!” she laughed. “You’re so much fun to tease! You should have seen your face!”

“What have I done to deserve this?” he grumbled through his grinning mouth.

“Nothing,” Belle said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “I just have one more question.”

“Oh, God. No. Please, have mercy.”

“Just one more,” she pleaded, “I promise.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” he warned, his voice low but his little smile spurring her on in a way he probably didn’t intend.

“You didn’t… walk in on me and Gaston, did you?”

“Walk in?”

Oh, goodness. Was he not familiar with that expression, or was he just too proper to even consider that she’d bring this up in conversation like this? If she’d worded it any more directly, his head would probably have exploded, and she wasn’t ready to have the words ‘how do you get ectoplasm out of cotton’ in her Google search history. No, the only thing to do here was to sit, wait, slowly raise a single eyebrow, let her little smirk grow wider and wider until finally:

“Ms. French!”

He looked like he was about to jump from the sofa and out of the window.

“It’s a legitimate concern!” she giggled.

If she’d gotten the impression that he wasn’t enjoying this silly little conversation, she would have stopped teasing him, but he looked so tickled, now, even through that expertly worn mask of indignation and complete shock. If he weren’t so translucent, Belle would have probably spied a little blush. She was convinced of that.

He was human.

“ _If_ I’d heard… anything happening as I was moving around the building, I would have kept clear. _If_. Which I didn’t. Not ever, actually. Not even once. Not a peep.” He was silent for a beat, forced his face into a neutral expression and then added, “Is that why you ended things?”

“Oh my _God!_ ” she gasped.

“I do believe you started it!”

They were both laughing now, and she’d had to put her empty glass on the coffee table so that she wouldn’t drop it to the floor in her hysterics.

Was she flirting with a ghost? Was she actually flirting with an actual ghost? Was this actually, _actually_ happening? Had she started it? Had he started it? He was the one who’d made a joke about her sex life! Didn’t he? She’d brought it up, but he’d joked about the perceived lack of it. Had she just imagined that?

No, no, no, that smirk of his was undeniably mischievous, even if he did look just as shy as he did smug. He was good at that, merging two emotions into a single, strange mood.

“That was my woeful attempt at modern banter, dearie. I’m sorry. I’m aware that times have changed and, well, I may have overstepped a boundary in my enthusiasm.”

“It’s okay, Rumple. Wasn’t nearly as scandalous as some of the things you’d hear on a girls’ night out with me and my friends, anyway. Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

At this point, she’d reach out and touch his arm to put him at ease. She still had that impulse. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever not have that impulse. It was such a big part of who she was. She was tactile, and well, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Right?

“I really did get carried away, though, Ms. French. It’s been a while since I had a conversation with anyone. Let alone…”

A few seconds of silence while he struggled to finish his sentence, and Belle was beyond curious. She leaned in a little bit, eyebrows raised, smiling to encourage him to find the words.

“Someone interesting,” he murmured.

He looked at her, his smile a little bit crooked but completely endearing. It was a strange moment of calm that was somehow completely electric at the same time. It wasn’t that awkwardness of before, but it wasn’t comfortable either. Not in a bad way, though.

 _Interesting_. She was interesting. What did that mean? Well, a distant voice in the back of Belle’s mind started to explain, it meant just that, and why on earth would you think any different, you weirdo?

“And I want to apologize again. For my reaction last night. You were understandably curious, and I let my frustration get the better of me.”

“Apology accepted. I accepted it last night, but just not in those words. Does that mean I can ask you something that would have maybe annoyed you a little bit last night?”

There was that kindness in his face that she’d sensed before. A gentle look, a small smile, a subtle nod.

“I don’t want to keep pushing you on this, and feel free to tell me to mind my own business, but… That you’re a dog person. That’s something you remember, right?”

“I suppose so. I don’t actually remember owning a dog,” he muttered.

“And that beautiful drawing you did-”

“It was just a sketch,” he interrupted, shaking his head dismissively.

“That beautiful sketch you did,” Belle insisted, spotting that shy but pleased smile of his again, “that must have been muscle memory.”

He didn’t look like he did last night, when she kept pushing him. He didn’t look cornered, now, and Belle didn’t think he was about to panic again. He merely sat there and looked at his hands, fingers woven together as he leaned his elbows on his knees. He was silent for a little while, but then she heard a soft sound of agreement deep in his throat, and she began to understand something. Well, a little bit. Maybe.

Earlier, when he said he wasn’t sure whether he agreed that it was good to remember, even if it hurt; that was more significant than she’d thought. If the pain was still there - which it obviously was - then the details might be there still. Just… buried under dust. Hidden away somewhere. Locked up.

“Do you want to remember, Rumple?”

His fingers twitched, his hands unfolded, they moved to rest on his thighs, instead.

“Something tells me that perhaps I should.”

“Would you let me help?”

“You couldn’t possibly.”

“But if I could. If I accidentally stumbled on a way to help you - I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I need to know. Would that be alright?”

“I don’t want to be a bother.”

“I wouldn’t ask if I felt that way.”

He wasn’t looking at her, still down at his hands with his shoulders slumped and his head inclined as if he was trying to make himself invisible - which he could, anyway, so why was he still here?

“I wouldn’t mind,” Rumple softly said.

Belle smiled. Good. She didn’t have a clue how she was going to go about this, but she’d already made a start by asking her father to identify that car, so it was good to have Rumple’s permission after all. A bit late, maybe, but still.

There was still one more thing, though. One more thing she wanted to bother him with. It was something she wasn’t sure how to bring up, because there wasn’t really an equivalent for this in “normal” social interaction. She bit her lip, scanned his face for his mood, turned over every rock in her mind for the words she was desperately trying to find (knowing fully well that they probably didn’t exist) until it became apparent that she must have been obvious about it, because he sighed, grinned, sat back and said, “Out with it. You look like you’re dying to ask me something else.”

A perceptive, handsome, amusing ghost. On her sofa. Sometimes it hit her hard all over again, and this was not the time, because she was about to try not to sound like a nervous child asking a parent for an impossible Christmas gift.

“Could I… I mean, would it be possible to… Is it physically possible to…”

Bloody hell, she was a mess. To think she paid her rent by putting words in a certain order. And he was looking at her now with that vaguely smug amused smirk, and that wasn’t helping things either.

Out with it.

“Is it physically possible for me to touch you?”

There.

It was an awkward question to ask, sure, but still the heat she felt creeping up her neck to stain her cheeks red was a bit much, wasn’t it? It was just scientific curiosity. She couldn’t look him in the eyes for some reason, so she just stared at his neck. Close enough.

“Or vice versa,” she hastily added. “You held a pen last night, and I was just wondering.”

“I-I’m... Um. I’m not sure.”

His little stammer gave her the courage to look up. He was frowning in thought, licked his lips in that nervous way of his, couldn’t settle his gaze on any one part of her face.

“I don’t know if this is… a bit forward of me, but could we maybe,” she paused to try and will her beating heart to slow to a more reasonable pace. “Could we maybe try? To touch, I mean. I’m just really curious, and it’s okay if you’re not comfortable with it. I just thought I’d ask, you know. In case you… In case you were wondering, too.”

God, why was he so quiet now? He really needed to say something before she babbled herself into knots. The skin of his neck shifted as his adam’s apple moved up and down again.

“I suppose it would be interesting to see if it’s possible. I think,” he said. “Perhaps. Just out of curiosity.”

Oh. This was happening. She would, maybe, touch a ghost in just a moment. Her stomach felt stupidly fluttery.

“So… How should we…”

“Well,” he coughed, shifting in the sofa. “Moving through things is easy, for me. To make contact with them, I need to concentrate.”

“Yeah.”

“So perhaps it would be best if I… tried to touch you.”

Belle couldn’t speak for some reason, so what she did instead was nod. Then she placed her hand on the seat between them, palm up.

Slowly, he began to reach for her hand. Agonizingly slow, and with a bit of a tremble that made her heart ache for some reason. Why was that? Was he scared she could feel him, and that it would be too strange for her to deal with? Too otherworldly? Too creepy?

Or was he scared that he would just go right through her? Because that’s what she desperately didn’t want to happen, too.

Rumple kept his gaze firmly fixed to her hand. Belle couldn’t decide whether to look at his face or his nearing arm, so her gaze flitted between the two until suddenly she felt the pressure of a single fingertip, and she let out a soft gasp.

He pulled back as if she’d shocked him. Or he her.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. He looked from his hand to hers and back again, concern clearly visible in those rich brown eyes of his.

“No, no, it’s alright. It’s okay. I felt you. I’m fine.”

And he’d felt normal, she thought. Well, maybe not completely. There had been an odd fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach when his finger brushed against her palm, a slight jump, but it was harmless. Not scary. Not painful or jarring. No worse than a touch from someone you really liked, like finally gathering the courage to reach out and grab your crush’s hand. Something a little bit like that.

 _Not_ that, of course.

Must have been an energy thing.

“Did you feel me?” she asked.

They were both speaking so softly, as if there was something fragile in between them, and the waves that their voices cut through the air could damage it beyond repair.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head with a determined frown.

“Do you, maybe… want to try that again? To make sure?”

“If you like.”

Again he reached out, but his fingers stayed hovering over her palm. Why wasn’t he touching her? She glanced up at his face in time to see him swallow, his dark eyes staring fixedly at his own hand, his eyebrows knitted together. Concentration? Worry? She could move her hand up and close the distance between them herself, but that wasn’t what they’d agreed on, was it? Belle was glad she didn’t have a clock hanging on the wall, or owned a wrist watch, because hearing the seconds tick away as they sat there suspended in the moment would have been excruciating. As it was, one might be forgiven to think that time had withdrawn from the room and left the pair of them be with their mutual curiosity and nervous laughter.

And then he moved again, but not to touch her palm. Up over her wrist, until his fingers, with just a hint of a tremble, hovered over the yellowing bruise on her forearm.

Her breath caught in her throat. He touched her.

A feather light touch just at the edge of the bruise made her catch her lip between her teeth so she couldn’t gasp and scare him off again. His touch was incredibly slow and gentle, and as it moved over her skin, tracing the outline of the patch of yellowish brown, she stopped breathing. No, not quite, not completely. She breathed slow, shallow, like a small bird held in a large hand - there was no room for deep breaths. There was something tying them together and she couldn’t breathe deep.

“So do you feel that?” she asked, her mouth desert dry.

No sound - just a nod.

He lingered until suddenly Belle could see her own skin through his much clearer and she looked up at him in concern.

“You’re fading again.”

He’d been staring at her arm the entire time, and her voice seemed to jolt him out of whatever strange state he’d been in. He looked up, blinked a few times.

“I thought that might happen.”

His hand was still there. His finger still at the edge of the bruise. He didn’t look at her.

“Did you put ice on it?”

“No. I was a bit too far gone that night,” she replied with a soft laugh.

He drew his hand back, and Belle thought the fading had stopped for a moment, but then with a feeling of disappointment that made itself known like a ten ton boulder dropped straight into her belly, she realized that it had only slowed. Did he really have to leave again? Couldn’t he just sit there and talk to her in his see-through state? Or did talking take up just as much energy?

The rain had stopped.

“Come back tomorrow?”

“Don’t you have friends to go and have fun with?” he teased. “Carouse? Cause mischief?”

“I’m trying to make a new one,” she replied with a shrug and a bright smile.

His teasing smirk faltered and shriveled to a melancholy smile, and God, she’d never wanted to hug someone as bad in her life.

“Please come back tomorrow,” she added, for good measure. The man had good manners, for the most part. Would he deny a lady who used the magic word?

“Alright.”

He faded away, and she sat there until that feeling came again. That feeling she got last night when she’d _known_ that he was really gone, somehow.

But that only came after Belle stared wide-eyed at her wine glass flying up from the coffee table, up over her head, floating merrily on toward the kitchen sink and she gasped at the sudden sound of the tap running - he was only bloody doing the washing up for her!

She giggled uncontrollably until with a lovely sounding _clink_ her helpful invisible ghost placed the glass upside down on the counter and said, “Good night, Ms. French.”

“Good night, Rumple.”

How sweet.

And then he was gone. She felt his absence. Like a slight nip in the air.

………

 

 

**Months earlier**

One night, he opened his eyes again, and what he saw was darkness slowly change into a deep blue, getting paler as he blinked and took a few exploratory steps.

He was awake again.

Ah, there were the colors again. There were probably more gaps in his mind, now, he thought. He couldn’t be sure, really, until he tried to recall something and found nothing. Like a missing step on a staircase in the dead of night. The last time he’d drifted away for a while, he’d come back with fewer memories. This time might be the same. Or worse. Although ‘worse’ was a bit of a loaded term, wasn’t it? So negative.

Perhaps he should figure out what he did remember and take it from there.

He was in the attic of a converted building. He knew that. No-one had come up here, it seemed. His little desk and his chair were still there. That book he’d borrowed from that man in the ground floor apartment was still there on his desk, covered in a layer of dust. The year? 2000 something. 2010? Give or take a few years. Something like that. He knew that he was a man. Not a young man.

And dead, of course.

He let himself slide down through the floor and into the hallway. No-one there. He could hear the sound of a television blaring. It was dark out, but it couldn’t have been that late, then, unless the tenants had gotten ruder in his absence. He took the stairs this time, just for nostalgia’s sake, going down another level to pick a random door to move through, where he saw an old couple sitting in front of the television, the flashing lights reflected in their glasses. He remembered them. Not from before; from the last time he was conscious.

He slipped through the wall into the apartment next door and nearly died a second death of fright when a small ginger kitten perched on a dresser yowled and hissed and jumped away from him, knocking a perfume bottle to the thankfully carpeted floor in the process. Well, that was new.

And it knew he was there. Strange feeling to be noticed after so long.

“Bobo! You’d better not be knocking things off the dresser again!”

Great big thudding footsteps neared the bedroom door, and when it flew open, he saw a familiar face. That was Mrs. Adams who’d moved here after her children had all flown the coop and left her alone in her big, empty house, and whose husband had left her years before that. Her children had all chipped in to get her this flat. Sweet of them, he’d thought, when he heard her sniffle about it on the phone last time he’d seen her. Did they get her the kitten, too? She was very lonely. He remembered that.

Bobo. As good a name as any, he supposed.

What was his name?

He floated up into the apartment above and left the kitten be just as it was scooped up in Mrs. Adams loving arms.

Here was a young man sitting on the sofa with a can of beer in his hand, his feet up on the coffee table and his eyes firmly glued to the screen. Same show the elderly couple were watching. He didn’t remember that young man. He must have been new.

“Gaston? Can you turn it down a little bit? I just have to finish this paragraph and I can’t concentrate.”

Gaston? Rich parents? French immigrants?

But what was his name?

“Sure, babe.”

He turned towards the voice. There was a diminutive figure with long brown hair sitting at a computer. She was new, too. Interesting accent. He moved a little closer, tried to catch a glimpse of her face to make sure. Hm, yes, she was new. If he could remember the ordinary couple in the other apartment, he would have remembered those eyes. Piercing. Almost literally; she was looking right through him, staring at the wall with a dreamy expression for a few seconds before turning back to the screen and tap tap tapping away at the keyboard with dainty little fingers.

What was her name?

Those computer things looked just about the same as he remembered them from the last time he woke up from a stretch of blackness. So did the television. Had technology slowed down its terrifying race, or had he just not slept that long?

And what was his name?

Why was he still here?

There was something important hiding in the depths. Or was there? Did it matter? He was still here, and he was still himself, even though time and oblivion had teamed up to chip away his name. He was a concrete statue in a forgotten corner of a park. No name plaque. But still there.

Blue Eyes smiled prettily at the screen, now.

So he still felt. When he saw her smile like that, he wanted to smile, too. That was feeling, right? He was wondering about that, even before he fell asleep. Wondering if some day, after he’d forgotten everything there was for him to forget, would he still know what it felt like? Life?

He left the pair of them be. He had no place there. Those two were just beginning their lives. No room for death.

He finished making the rounds. Many of the other tenants were asleep, and he could remember all of them to some extent. He went back down to the elderly couple and sat down on the table behind them. He could see the television screen over their shoulders. He would just sit there and catch up on the world with Phyllis and Donald for a little while. They’d lived long to have plenty of ghosts between them. One more wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Maybe after they’d turned off the television, he’d finish that book so he could return it. Only polite.

And perhaps tomorrow, he would see if he couldn’t figure out the name of that blue-eyed newcomer.

But what was his name?


	5. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle and her ghost spend a few more nights getting to know each other. Belle is so happy to be spending time with her new friend (perhaps at the expense of some other aspects of her life) that she doesn't seem to pick up on the fact that something is worrying him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you for the lovely comments and the kudos. Really makes my day. <3

He only sat in her arm chair because it would be strange to just keep hovering. To him, it was stranger still to pretend that he had a body at all, but he would gladly spare her the discomfort of having a translucent man just standing about all evening - the fact that he had to wait to turn visible until after she’d let him in just in case someone walked into the hallway was probably unsettling enough as is. And so he sat in her chair and watched her try to find another important part of her creative process she’d managed to get lost in that huge pile of unordered papers of hers.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get the monster to come out of the closet, but it will, eventually,” she said.

“Doesn’t that mean something else, these days?”

“What do you mean?”

She had her papers spread on the floor and she was sitting in the middle of the mess. She’d been rifling through them with a look of pure concentration, and now she turned that look to him.

“Coming out of the closet,” he clarified.

“Well, look at you! All up to date!” she sang.

“I try to keep up,” he muttered, shrugging.

Even not knowing where he came from - _when_ he came from - he knew that the world had gotten to be a kinder place, on the whole. At least in these parts. There were still wars, there was still hatred, pain, real life human monsters and injustice, but things were different, now. Better. He would have liked to have been alive these days.

“Yeah, it does mean that, too,” she said, smiling to herself as she returned her attention to the papers.

“So did you consciously choose that as a metaphor? To help children who feel different?”

“That wasn’t what I was going for, no. I mean, not consciously. Cute, though.”

“What?”

“You being all modern about it,” she replied, glancing up at him with a small smirk for only a second.

“Perhaps I just _am_ modern.”

“Not with your sense of decorum, you’re not,” she muttered.

She looked a bit absent for a moment, comparing one piece of paper to another, holding both up in the air. To his mild surprise, she didn’t follow that up with another attempt at figuring out when he’d died. Was she distracted, or had she accepted the fact that he was nothing more than a mere shadow of a person?

“Well,” she added after a few seconds of silence, her voice a little deeper, “what’s left of it, at least.”

“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing! Mr. ‘Not a peep’.”

Ah, hell. She wasn’t going to let go of that, was she? The one time he tried his hand at a bit of modern banter… He coughed, crossed one leg over the other and quickly changed the subject, asking her, “So why does she want this monster to come out?”

“Because she’s curious,” she replied. Her tone suggested she’d thought that to be obvious. “And maybe a little bit lonely.”

“But she’s not stupid, is she? Everyone knows monsters are dangerous.”

“You’re right. She’s not stupid. She just knows there’s no such thing as monsters.”

“From the way you’ve described it - pitch black fur and red eyes and everything - it sounds fairly monstrous to me.”

“Well, looks can be deceiving. People are just scared of things that are different. Why d’you think the monster is scared of _her?_ ”

“I don’t know.”

“Because she’s not scared of it, and he’s not used to that. She’s different. Do you see what I mean?”

“So she’s a monster, too, is what you’re saying.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” she laughed. “I was thinking more like; if everyone’s a monster, then no-one is.”

That was one of those things that made no sense and a great deal of it at the same time. He tried to bite his smile away, but it was no use. She was shoveling everything onto a great big pile of papers again, and the contrast between her mental acuity and the actual physical mess that she kept making was much too amusing. She was like a sentient whirlwind. An articulate disaster. And this was her Friday night.

“But your little girl isn’t scared of the monster.”

“She’s not, no,” she replied, shaking her head. She hoisted herself up from the floor and made a face that told him that either her leg was asleep, or her muscles ached; she’d been sitting like that for quite some time. “Well, maybe a little bit. But I don’t think she’d admit to that.”

“A wee bit too brave? Proud? No self-preservation instinct?”

She sat down on her coffee table, one leg over the other. There was a perfectly good sofa for her to sit on, but there she was, closer than she really ought to be. He didn’t much like it. The closer she got, the more effort he put in not looking… well, not looking like a ghost. He wasn’t sure why it still took so much energy to keep this up. Perhaps it was that she was an immense distraction. She was too expressive. Her words, her voice, her looks, her enthusiastic hand gestures - it all demanded his attention and he was too out of practice not to be a little nervous splitting his energy between looking at her, and making sure there was something for her to look at, too.

Something vague, something old, something tired and unattractive, but something for her to talk to, nonetheless.

“No, she can take care of herself. Maybe it’s just that she has a bit of a predatory instinct, too,” she replied, smirking prettily. He shouldn’t let her smiles spur him on. He really shouldn’t.

“Who were we talking about, again?” he asked, half grinning.

He was getting better at this banter thing. She smirked, shook her head, looked down into her lap and bit her lip. He should really stop noticing all of those things.

“Rumple?”

It did sound nice, didn’t it? Oh, yes, absolutely ridiculous, still, but he’d meant it when he said he liked it for a nickname. It was safe, too. Not too humanlike. This way he was still mostly fictional. Not too fixed in her reality.

“Mm?”

“Was I the first? To notice you, I mean.”

He shook his head. “That would be Bobo, dearie.”

“Human,” she giggled. “The first human.”

He pretended to be in thought. Looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, chewed his lip, sighed and said, “I think so.”

But really, he knew so. It wasn’t necessarily the lack of memories that had him convinced of this, it was a feeling. And feeling was all he had.

“I’m honored.”

He huffed, but smiled back at her anyway. She was the strangest woman in the world. She just had to be. If there was anyone stranger than her, he would pay to catch a glimpse. In the traveling circus. Where such an unsettling wonder of the world would belong.

…

She looked tired, tonight. When he asked her, she said she’d stayed up late thinking and woke up early to write, and that she’d gotten a whole lot done and she was happy with it, but that perhaps she should have taken a nap.

Sure looked like it, with her hair a bit of a bird’s nest and her smiles the absolute sleepiest. A young woman like her should only look tired on a Saturday evening if she’d spent the night before having fun with her friends.

So she wasn’t as talkative, but that was perfectly fine, because by God this woman was a verbal runaway train at times. It was as if she kept forgetting that he still had a few difficulties keeping himself visible for extended periods of time. It was difficult to concentrate sometimes.

But now tiredness had slowed her whirring brain, they sat in silence on her sofa, staring ahead at the flickering screen of her television.

“Do you watch TV, Rumple? When someone’s not home?” she asked him.

“Sometimes I sit with Donald and Phyllis and I watch whatever they’re watching. Don’t want to blow up some poor sod’s electricity bill.”

“Really?” she chirped, turning to give him a bright smile.

Was that a question? Disbelief? He looked at her, shrugged and nodded. Of course, really. Why would he lie? Her smile didn’t let up. She just stared at him for a few more seconds and made him want to vanish right under her nose.

“Very considerate of you,” she said, right before a great big yawn took control of her tiny body and she rushed to cover her mouth halfway through. After, she gave him an embarrassed smile and a shrug, then turned back to the screen to resume her search for some mythical program that would keep the both of them - what? Entertained? Distracted? Quiet? Under the illusion that this was normal?

“So what do you guys watch?”

“They like nature documentaries and game shows. Mostly that.”

“Sounds like a hoot,” she said with a deep chuckle.

He liked it when she tried not to smile. Her lips would twist and curl and she’d struggle to keep her own disobedient face in check. Pretty futile effort considering her eyes laughed louder than she ever could.

“And you watch the news, I presume?”

“I prefer to read the papers,” he replied, shaking his head.

“Why’s that?”

“Because the papers don’t assault me with ominous music and flashing lights.”

Her brow furrowed and she pursed her lips just a little bit as she mulled over his words. He wondered what it was like, being such an open book. To pin your heart on your sleeve as if life hadn’t yet taught you that that was, generally speaking, a horrible idea. Well, she was young. He hoped she wouldn’t have to learn.

“I see what you mean. It can all get a bit… sensationalist.”

“Precisely.”

A few more pushes of the button, a couple of disgusted scowls at a few programs he assumed was not to her taste, and then suddenly she smiled and pointed at the screen as if she thought he’d forgotten where that big hulking television set of hers was stood.

“Ooh! Let’s watch this!”

On the screen, there was a little boy with black hair staring at a huge snake in an enclosure.

“What’s this, then?”

“Harry Potter!”

It took him a few seconds to realize that that name rang a bell.

“Oh. I’ve read that.”

“What?” she cried out, bouncing up on the sofa to face him with her legs curled under her. “You read the Harry Potter books?”

“Just one. Borrowed it from someone on the first floor.”

“And did you like it?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t have finished it otherwise. Something funny, Ms. French?”

Her grin looked almost painful, it was that intense.

“No, no, not funny. Just… I don’t know, Rumple. It just makes me happy, like I love the idea of you and that cat. I don’t know why. Just let me enjoy this moment okay?”

He shut his mouth and let her beam at him for a little while longer, softly chuckling under her breath once or twice. He didn’t know what was so amusing or endearing about this, but in any case, it was difficult to mistake for mockery. So he sighed, sat back, rolled his eyes and waited for her to stop being so bloody tickled by the simple fact that he had read a bloody book.

“Done savoring the moment?” he grumbled.

She narrowed her eyes in feigned contemplation, hummed, tapped her finger against her chin and eventually chimed, “Yup!” He tried not to snort, shook his head and turned his attention to the television. He hadn’t watched a film in ages. Good thing he’d read the book, because even though the last few days’ practice had made him better at controlling the energy it took to simply be present in the room, it still felt difficult to really focus.

Other than a brief moment when the ghosts started flooding the hall, with him tutting and muttering something about unrealistic expectations set by the media for ghost kind, and her trying desperately not to giggle too much, they were silent and at peace. Sometimes he could see her look over at him from the corner of his eye, but he ignored that. He could understand that she was curious, intrigued by the oddity of having someone semi see-through sitting inches away.

But after a while, he noticed that she hadn’t cast a sneaky glance in his direction for quite some time. He couldn’t resist the temptation and turned his head to look.

The poor thing had fallen asleep.

Her chin was pressed against her chest, her head tilted to the side, her lips slightly parted in a way that would have her drooling on her top in a few moments. He chuckled silently and clicked the television off.

Did she have a blanket lying around? Ah, there, in a wrinkled pile on a dining chair for some reason. He wasn’t sure why he was moving so slow - there weren’t any footsteps for her to hear. But he couldn’t _not_ take care. If she really had woken early, typed out her heart and soul and then stayed up just to keep him occupied, then she deserved her rest, and it was his responsibility to safeguard it.

“Rumple?” she whined as he was just about to drape the blanket over her. The wee thing still had some fight in her. He wasn’t surprised.

“No no, it’s alright. Keep your eyes shut,” he cooed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hush.”

Her eyes were losing the battle against the formidable foe that was sleep. She would tear her eyes open only to have them flutter shut again, and it almost made him feel it. Remember it. What that felt like, when those sleepy blues found his barely-there eyes.

He pulled the blanket up to her chin, taking care not to touch her skin again with his fingers temporarily solid.

“Thank you. See you tomorrow,” she murmured, wriggling onto her side, her face pressed into the sofa in a most inelegant but decidedly comical manner.

Not ‘Please come back tomorrow,’ not even ‘Will you come back?’ Just ‘See you tomorrow,’ as if it were a fixed inevitability in time and space.

Perhaps it was.

And it was wrong.

…

But he showed up, anyway, because he was weak-willed and she was warmth. And at least it was nice to see her well-rested. Took away a little bit of that nagging guilt that had been building in the back of his mind and had been getting to be difficult to ignore.

“Come on! If you can hold a pen, you can play Scrabble!”

“I can’t if I don’t know the rules, Ms. French.”

“I’ll teach you. Please?”

That pout? Emotional warfare. He made a note not to expect her to play fair during this game, too, whatever the rules were.

“Fine,” he sighed. She cheered and slid down from the sofa to plop herself onto the floor. What was it about this woman and the floor? It wasn’t even carpeted; it was wood. This couldn’t in a million years have been more comfortable than her dining room chairs.

But it didn’t matter. It was all the same for him.

She pulled out a box from underneath the coffee table and dropped it unceremoniously on top. It made a rather pleasing sound of small things knocking together. Those must have been the tiles he could see pictured on the box.

“A word game?” he asked, lowering himself to the floor as she had, on the opposite side of the table.

“Yup! Each letter has a value, you have to place them on the board to form a word. Some squares add to the value of your tile or word, and you count that all up to get your score for that turn.”

“Sounds fairly simple.”

“Yeah, but that’s just the basic stuff. I’ll explain the other rules as we play.”

She unfolded the board and plopped down two strange plastic things he assumed were for keeping the tiles on.

“Okay?” she asked, as if he was ever going to refuse her now.

“Okay.”

Years… Yowlers… Pride… Doofus… (She gave him a pointed look and quirked an eyebrow when she played that one.) He couldn’t deny that this was fun, once he’d gotten the hang of it. She kept the score on a piece of paper she’d kept in that box, and he enjoyed her look of pure concentration when she had to calculate a particularly big score. He was sorely tempted to whisper some random numbers to make her lose count, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

And then her phone rang, projecting a cheery tune into the room. She was visibly startled and scrambled up and hurried to her desk, where that thing was making a hellish noise as it vibrated against the wood.

“Sorry about this,” she muttered, flashing him a quick smile. He returned it and nodded to indicate that she should answer it. She looked from the screen back to him, so he looked away. Please, let her answer her damned phone calls. She shouldn’t ignore anyone, for his sake. For the sake of a dead man.

“Ruby! Hi!” she chimed, licking her lips nervously, shooting him another apologetic smile.

“No, Rubes, I’m fine. I’ve just been busy writing, that’s all. … No, you’re right. … Yeah, I know. But we can do lunch again soon. … I know. Listen, Rubes, I have to go. … No! Nothing like that! Don’t be ridiculous. … Yeah. … No, I will. But I have to hang up now. … Alright, bye. Love you too.”

This was wrong.

He was awful.

He’d latched on to this woman and had been stealing away her nights. Minutes and then hours at a time. Taken her brightness from the living and kept it to himself to play bloody Scrabble, to feel less of a shadow, to feel less of a negative space and an unholy anomaly.

But that was exactly what he was.

He forced himself to fade. He didn’t have to. He had plenty of energy still. But he couldn’t stay with her a minute longer. Couldn’t risk getting any more fond of her than he already was. Definitely shouldn’t let her get used to him, to the thought that this wasn’t completely insane.

“You’re fading already?” she asked, frowning. Quickly, he had to go quickly. Her disappointment was visible in that open book of a face of hers, and he couldn’t take it.

“I think that game took a bit too much out of me.”

“Oh. Oh, okay. We’ll finish it tomorrow, yeah?”

Her confused but hopeful smile was a blow to the gut and he needed to leave right the fuck away or he would crack and it would only get more difficult to let this woman go.

“Perhaps we’d better not.”

He had to go before he was tempted to subject himself to her look. He let go of whatever it was that kept him visible and rushed to slide through the wall, but it was too late. He’d heard it. A small, uncertain voice calling out, “Rumple?”

He deserved that pang of guilt. He’d left her like a coward, rushed up to his attic like a frightened dog to its familiar cage. ‘Perhaps better not?’ That wasn’t even a clear ‘Goodbye, I must stop stealing away little bits of your life for my own, now, because I’ve just remembered that I’m a black hole and you are not.’

Why had he shown himself to her? If he’d just let her talk to herself in her drunken mood, she would have gone on with her life. Life being the key word, here. Because that’s what this was all about. He was drawn to her like a moth to a flame only because it was a bad idea, and he couldn’t seem to stop himself regardless. The metaphor fell apart in all other aspects. She was the flame because she was light, and he was anything but. He was the moth because she wasn’t shackled to darkness as he was. But if he flew too close to her light, his wings wouldn’t catch fire; her light would go out. What’s a candle to an endless expanse of black?

It had already started. The look in her eyes as she told her friend she’d meet up with her soon; it was a look of guilt. Like she was lying. She felt obligated, didn’t she? To talk to him. To sit with him and pretend he wasn’t the dead man he was. Because she was kind. Courageous. Completely misguided. She had taken it upon herself to make him forget that he was, essentially, a fading echo. She was imaginative, as most writers were, and when she’d looked at him, she’d filled in the blanks.

Filled in the blanks and called the end result - her creation: ‘Rumpelstiltskin.’

And she was very good at it. Those nights in her flat with her little fairy lights and her infectious laughter had made him feel less like dust.

But still he shouldn’t have shown himself. He shouldn’t have talked to her. Shouldn’t have asked her about herself and definitely shouldn’t have tried to make her giggle with that stupid little floating wineglass moment.

He didn’t regret chasing that oaf out of her flat. Not at all. But he should have left it at that. Let her get on with her life.

And he shouldn’t have touched her.

Even though there were holes in his memory the size of a lunar crater, there was one thing he knew for sure; it had been the first time he had touched anyone since his death. That was a fact. Undeniably true. He just knew.

The thing was, he wasn’t shocked that he could make contact with skin. If he could hold things, push things, move things, then that meant he could touch matter. Skin was matter.

But touching and feeling were two different things entirely. The first was a touch. The second, he’d felt. Maybe. He still wasn’t sure. It couldn’t have been possible - he had no skin, he had no flesh and no nerves. But when his finger touched her arm, tracing that bruise, he felt it. Or imagined it. Probably the latter.

She kept asking him to come back, and he couldn’t say no. If he was still here tomorrow, he would be tempted to go see her. Just for a second. Just to make sure she was forgetting him. Having fun with the living. Forgetting the dead.

Unless he just closed his eyes, perhaps. If he just sat down at his little desk, closed his eyes and dispersed. He’d done it before, he could do it again. Maybe when he woke again - _if_ he woke again - she would have forgotten all about him and gotten on with her life.

Married, maybe. A couple of kids running about. Quite a name for herself as a children’s author.

He sat. He waited. He took out a stack of paper from the desk drawer and drew. Perhaps he could lose himself that way. Get himself entirely onto that paper until the ink in his pen went dry.

The colors left him. Blue was the last one to go. Figured. Those eyes were hard to forget.

Then even black went.

…

Belle spent her Monday slumped over the checkout desk, staring off into the distance, willing the library doors to stay firmly shut so she could just sit there and feel terrible. What had she done? No, seriously - that wasn’t a dramatic rhetorical question; what was it that she had done to make him leave like that?

Had she said something wrong? Accidentally spelled out an insult on the board? Looked at him funny?

_“Perhaps we’d better not.”_

That didn’t even make any sense. That wasn’t a proper ‘I’ve tired of you, goodbye,’ or a ‘Oh, there’s a light up ahead, I’m gonna head towards it, bye and thanks for teaching me how to play Scrabble.’

It was nothing. And it was painful.

And to top things off, the library doors began to open, and Belle sighed in resignation. She sat up straight and grabbed a pen, ready to start looking productive in case it was someone important, but then she heard small footsteps, and she looked up.

“Alicia!”

“Hi, Belle!”

She was a sight for sore eyes, clutching about five massive books to her chest and beaming from ear to ear.

“Read all of these already, hm?”

“Mhm.”

“Any good?”

“I really liked three of them. The other two were a bit stupid.”

“Yeah?”

“I read them anyway.”

It was a simple little sentence that tripped her mind up and made her think of two nights before, when she had fallen asleep on her sofa and Rumple had covered her with a blanket. When the fact that a ghost had read The Philosopher’s Stone had tickled her beyond belief, and he’d said that if he hadn’t liked it, he wouldn’t have read it.

A ghost would know not to waste time on dreadful books.

“Next time, you can just bring those back if you want. There are way too many good books in the world to waste your time on a bad one.”

Alicia looked doubtful for a moment, but then nodded, dropping the books to the counter. Belle began to scan the codes.

“You look sad,” came her soft little voice.

“Do I?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing to worry about, doll,” Belle said, shaking her head.

“Yeah, but,” she started, folding her arms on the counter and resting her head on it, “it’s good to talk when you’re sad sometimes. That’s what my mom and dad always tell me.”

Whenever Belle felt a little down about the state of the world, she would think of Alicia and her parents who seemed to be doing everything right, raising her to think about her feelings and acknowledge them like that. Little Alicia would turn out more than alright, that she knew.

“Your parents are right.”

“So?”

Belle sighed and cocked her head to the side.

“I thought I’d made a friend, but then… something went wrong.”

“Did you guys have a fight?”

“No, and that’s what's so weird, you know? Cause we had this thing, right, where he would come over every night and we’d talk, or watch TV, or even play games. But then last night he said he wouldn’t be coming back”

“Was it like a boyfriend and girlfriend thing?” she asked in a quieter voice, giving her a cheeky little smile.

“No! No, no no, not like that,” Belle stammered, shaking her head furiously. God, children and their overactive imaginations. “He’s just a friend. Or, he was.”

“Can’t you talk to him about it? Ask him what’s wrong?”

“I would, but… I think he may have left.”

“Left town?”

God. If only he’d left town. Or the country. The entire continent. If only he were some place Belle knew for sure existed.

“Yeah,” she replied softly. “He left town.”

“Without saying anything?”

“Yup.”

“That’s not very nice of him.”

Alicia shook her little head disapprovingly, and Belle couldn’t help but smile. Good head on her shoulders, that one.

“Yeah, it wasn’t very nice of him at all. But I still want to know why.”

“Just ask him when he comes back,” she said, shrugging.

“ _When_ he comes back?”

“Yeah. You’re super fun and nice, Belle. He’ll come back to you. I’d be sad if I never saw you again.”

Yeah, she adored that little girl. When she finished her book, she would be the first one to read it.

There was no-one else in the library, so she walked around with Alicia and picked out a new bunch of books for her to borrow and helped fit them into her school bag, which was only just big enough for all five.

She spent the rest of the afternoon grateful that this town didn’t really seem to be the bookish kind, wallowing in self-pity, spinning around on her chair, starting two or three new books and immediately giving up on them.

And then she went home. To where she knew in her heart her ghost wouldn’t show up tonight. And he didn’t. She waited, even though she knew. And it was way too late, and she would be tired as hell tomorrow, but still she waited for hours until she finally gathered the will to force herself to climb up into her bed and close her weary eyes.

…

Exactly the same scenario, minus the uplifting intermezzo that was a visit from Alicia, on Tuesday. Except now, she was exhausted to boot. A bunch of high school students with a research project, a nice old lady who couldn’t find the natural science section, a tourist asking for directions all came bursting through the doors at different points during the day, but that was it.

And then she went home again, where she took a long overdue nap and pretended that yoghurt was an acceptable and even fulfilling meal. When she checked her e-mail, Belle noticed her father had finally responded to her e-mail asking about that toy car Rumple had drawn.

_Hey doll,_

_Sorry for the delay. Looks a little bit like a Ford Model T to me. Can’t be sure though. Hope that helps! Big storm hitting tonight, so stay safe. Love you._

She typed up a quick reply to say thanks, and then immediately went to Wikipedia to type in the words.

Ford Model T.

Produced between 1908-1926.

But did it even mean anything? Not just because Rumple was gone and presumably gone forever, but was this even a hint at all? Her father liked old cars, and he didn’t die in the mid-twenties of the previous century, so why did she even think this could be significant at all? At first she’d thought that if she could figure out what kind of car it was and when it was made, there would only be one question left: Did he own the actual car or play with the toy version?

Belle looked out of the window and saw that the rain was damn near flying horizontal on the frightening winds.

It didn’t matter. He’d left.

But that was the thing about Belle. Pessimism was not in her nature. Which, if she’d remembered that, she would have let it stop her from getting stuck into the wine again. But now she was two glasses deep, and she felt brave and rash and dumb, and she had headed out into the hall to go and find that attic of his. Maybe he was hiding up there, reading someone else’s books. Little ghost nerd.

Oops - she’d made herself giggle, and people were probably asleep. If they could sleep through the thunder.

She knew that there was no staircase leading up to the attic, so instead she walked around, staring at the ceiling, looking for a hatch of some kind, which when she found it, proved to be a little too high for someone of her stature, so she quickly went back into her flat to drag out a dining chair.

It was probably not a good idea to try and balance herself on this thing, but she didn’t care. She was fueled by optimism (and wine) and now she could finally reach the string and pull down the ladder.

Which bumped into her chair and nearly sent her crashing to the floor.

“Shh,” she hissed at the chair. Or herself. Hardly mattered, it was a useless thing to do either way.

Slowly, steadily, Belle climbed up the ladder, stuck her head bravely into the square opening and whispered, “Rumple?”

No response. Well, it was worth a shot.

It was dark and dusty up there, and not nearly as big as she’d imagined it. She looked around for a light switch, which kept her busy for a little while because she’d neglected to look up and see the bare light bulb with a little string attached.

“Oh.”

She pulled it, and a weak, orange light came into the room, making it a little less difficult for her to see. There was a little desk and a chair, and the rest of the attic seemed to be bricked off in a dry, shoddily constructed wall that looked like it would crumble if a fly landed on it.

Someone’s copy of _Love, Again_ was serving as a paper weight. Belle took the papers out from underneath it and gasped. She recognized those pen strokes. He’d been drawing. There was her little girl on her tip toes, peeking into the closet, her hands clinging on to the door. He’d signed it. In beautiful cursive. _Rumple_.

This man. She felt a strange emotion rise up from the pit of her belly to hit the back of her throat. Sadness? Anger? Hurt?

“Rumple?” she tried again. Outside the wind whistled, and the thunder was louder up here, much louder than in her apartment. A sudden gust of wind was followed by the sound of something small falling to the floor, and Belle whipped around to see that it was probably that dry, crumbling brick wall.

Some of those bricks were awfully loose. Clearly the cement had just dried up and crumbled after God knows how many decades. Belle moved a little closer and gave one brick an experimental push. Yup, loose, alright. What if there was something behind it?

Not Rumple, of course.

But something, maybe? Something neat. Maybe he’d stashed some books, there. Belle wiggled out one brick, then another, and then another three which she stacked on the floor at her feet, then took her phone out of her pocket and reached it through.

By horror movie standards, this was a terrible move, but Belle didn’t believe in monsters.

The light of her screen was flashed back into her eyes. There was something right underneath the hole, sitting right there on the floor. She couldn’t really reach her head through to see, but something was there, alright.

She put her phone on the desk, took a deep breath (she may not have believed in monsters, but the horrific mental images were still there) and reached through the hole, stretching her arm all the way down until her hand made contact with something smooth and cold.

There was a box in there. Tin, it seemed, and much bigger than a cigar box. It was cool in her hands, and something shifted inside of it as she pulled it out from the little hidden niche in the wall. She opened it.

The hinges made a rusty, screaming sound.

And she immediately closed it again. This wasn’t hers. This was his. She didn’t know that for sure, but somehow she _did_. And he’d told her it was okay for her to help if she could, but… If whatever was in this box would solve his mystery, would give him his memories and his name back, should he not be the one to decide whether to open it at all?

She stood still in the middle of the storm as it raged and fussed and shook the attic just enough for her to feel it. Her grip on the tin box was tight. Her throat constricted for some reason.

If she really was one hundred percent convinced that she would never see him again, then she would definitely have opened it, wouldn’t she? If she felt in her heart that _’Perhaps we’d better not’_ would be the last words this man would ever speak to her, there would be no reason to wait. No-one’s privacy left to respect.

She had a little hope left in her.

“Rumple, please,” she said, her voice a little louder than before. “ _Please_ wake your silly arse up and tell me what to do with this bloody box before I lose my mind.”

She put the tin box on the desk and hugged herself. The storm raged on.

“Please. Rumple.”

Did she just hear her name, or was that the wind?

“Rumple?”

Another crash of thunder up above, but then…

“Belle.”

That was his voice. That was definitely his voice. It was soft and she didn’t know where it came from, but it was his, and he was here. Somewhere.

“Rumple! Where are you?”

She turned around, even looked into that hole in the wall again, but a softly spoken, “Here,” told her that he was behind her, about two lengths of that desk away.

He was there. Just a white outline with a hint of a face, but his eyes were there. He was _there_.

“You’re crying,” sounded his voice.

Was she? She felt a hot tear roll down her cheek, now. Oh. She hadn’t realized; that had just happened quite without her knowledge, let alone permission. It’s just that… he was gone forever, and now he wasn’t anymore. He was there, right in front of her, slowly becoming more solid in the soft flickering lamplight.

And she was crying, apparently. Jesus.

“I’m just glad you’re back, that’s all,” she murmured. She didn’t care that she was staring, now.

“Oh.”

Oh? Was that all? _Oh?_

“Did you go away on purpose?” she asked.

“… Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought it would be for the best.”

“You thought wrong,” she replied with a bitter laugh.

“You were turning away from your friends to keep a dead man company. I couldn’t just let you-”

“That’s not your responsibility,” she snapped.

He had some color to him now, and even though he was still much more see-through than he had been these last few nights, Belle could read his face even from this far away. It seemed she was getting through to him. Letting him know that this was not okay, it was not, it would never be, it was wrong and it was awful to just… _God_ , what a fool!

And she was so happy he was back.

“How many months have I been gone for? I still remember you, so it can’t have been that many.”

“Months?” she repeated, shaking her head.

He looked shocked, now.

“ _Years?_ You don’t look like you’ve aged.”

Oh. Oh good God.

“You, uh… We… A day,” she blurted with an utterly unnecessary cough.

“A day? One day?”

“Yeah.”

“A single day?”

He raised an eyebrow, and she could spot a little smile that made her want to look away and never look back. Oh, God. This was embarrassing. She’d made such a fuss, the wine had made her weepy, and even though she was so, so incredibly glad that he had come back, she was still so _angry._

“Well I didn’t know if you’d gone for good, did I?” said Belle, folding her arms over her chest demonstratively.

It seemed like it took all of the effort in the world for him to get that grin of his under control, but eventually he managed, more or less, so he could offer a softly uttered, “I’m sorry.” But she could barely hear it over her heart beating in her chest and the wind whipping the building with a vengeance.

“You can’t just come into my life and make me care about you and then disappear because _you’ve_ decided I’d be better off.”

“I see that, now. I’m sorry.”

“You should have at least talked to me if you felt that way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not this patronizing woe-is-me Edward Cullen crap!”

He was silent for a beat, furrowed his brow and then muttered, “I don’t understand that reference.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

Her chest was heaving, her belly full of fire, her hands balled into fists.

“Belle. I’m truly sorry.”

“We’re friends, now, whether you like it or not, and you can’t just-”

The words choked her. She wasn’t angry anymore. She was tired. She was happy. She was overly emotional and she wanted to hug him like she’d hug any of her friends after they’d fucked up and apologized. And she was embarrassed. And he had never called her Belle when they sat and talked in her apartment, but there had not been a single ‘Ms. French’ since he’d come back.

“Belle?”

He’d stepped closer while she had her eyes clenched shut for a moment, trying to get herself together. And now he was close enough to touch, but he wasn’t, and that was still the strangest thing. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Apology accepted.”

He didn’t look very much at ease just yet.

“You’re still angry,” he said.

“No, it’s okay. I’m not.”

And she wasn’t. Not really. There was something still burning and eating away at her, and it was intense, and she didn’t know what that was, but she knew it wasn’t anger.

“But you look like you want to bash my skull in with that chair, the way you’re gripping it,” Rumple carefully said, nodding towards the chair.

She looked down at her hands. Her knuckles had gone white.

“If that’s not anger, what is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Rumple. Frustration?”

Ding ding ding. She’d said the word, and it became clear that that was indeed what she was feeling. It was a huge clarifying moment for her, but Rumple still looked more confused than she’d ever seen him.

“I want to hug you, you impossible bloody idiot!” she cried. “I want to hug you so tight you’re in actual, physical pain, and when you cry out cause it hurts so much, I want to tell you that it serves you right to just up and leave me like that, but I _can’t!_ ”

He stared at her with wide open eyes and his lips slightly parted in shock. After her outburst, it was oddly quiet. It seemed like she’d scared off the storm with her strong words, or at least baffled it into a temporary silence, because now the wind started up again and she could hear the thunder resume its low rumbling song.

“But you’re not angry,” Rumple said softly, a hint of cautious amusement in his deeper voice. He was visible enough for Belle to see the twinkle in his eyes, now, and it made her laugh and release the chair from her death grip.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and shook her head, murmuring, “I’m a bit tipsy, okay? Bit emotional. But I’m glad you’re back. Please don’t do that again. Not without telling me.”

He smiled a gentle, warm smile that soothed her heart and dried the very last of her tears.

“I promise.”

Good. Excellent. Great, and wonderful, and such a relief. But there was still the matter of that box that she’d left on the desk. That elephant in the room he wasn’t even aware of yet.

“Rumple? Was - … Is this yours?” she asked, nodding towards it, swallowing another lump in her throat. “I found it behind that wall.”

He turned towards it, blinked a few times, walked closer and moved as if to touch it, but he seemed to have changed his mind and pulled his hand away again.

“I don’t remember very clearly, but… I think it might be.”

Oh God. This was it. This was _him_. Whatever was in that box, it belonged to him, and it might tell his story, and then… And then what?

“Did you open it?”

His voice was dry. Uncertain. Made her glad she hadn’t.

“No. Well, I did,” she said, hurrying to add, “but I didn’t see what was inside. I just closed it again, immediately. I didn’t want to… You know. It’s yours.”

He tore his eyes away from that box and looked at her. She was chewing her lip nervously, wringing her hands, trying not to bounce on her heels and complete the nervous wreck picture.

He nodded, uttered a quiet, “Thank you,” and she felt the tension melt away. Her lungs released a massive sigh she didn’t realize she was holding.

“You don’t remember what’s in there, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“And you don’t want to know right now.”

He nodded.

“I want to finish our game of Scrabble,” he said, with a little half smile. “But will you take this down with us? Keep it somewhere in your flat.”

“Rumple, are you… are you sure?”

“Please.”

He looked at her pleadingly, his dark brown eyes endlessly deep and utterly disarming. He wanted her to take what could possibly be the very essence of who he was, and he trusted her to keep all of it safe. Trusted her not to open it without him.

She nodded. She could do that. For him.

…

Belle had kept the Scrabble board set up the way they’d left it. Hadn’t touched it since. She wasn’t sure whether that was because some part of her hadn’t given up hope and knew Rumple would be coming back, or simply because she was fairly lazy when it came to tidying up, but she sure was glad she hadn’t cleared it away.

“You didn’t peek at my letters, did you?” he warned, quirking an eyebrow at her over the board.

“I don’t need to cheat to kick your arse, Rumple,” she replied with the smuggest smirk she could muster. He laughed, snorted, watched as she placed her tiles and said,

“We’ll see whose arse gets kicked. You’re still a bit drunk. I have the advantage.”

“I can beat you drunk and blind.”

“You’ll have to if you keep swilling that cheap stuff.”

“Are you insulting my taste in wine?” she gasped, clutching her chest dramatically.

“I’m doubting its very existence.”

And when it got to be a little bit too late and he was on his way to fading again, she knew she didn’t have to ask. And Belle could see that Rumple knew he didn’t have to tell her. But still he looked at her, nodded his head in a slight bow and said, “See you tomorrow.”

And even though it was much too late, and she had to get up early to go to work in the morning, and the emotional roller coaster of these past few days had drained her of all of her energy, it still took Belle a little too long to fall asleep, because the image of his smile when he played his last word of the game was like a light that wouldn’t switch off.

In the bottom drawer of her desk now sat a tin box that could very well tell her the story of the most interesting friend she’d made in her entire life.

But the last thing she saw before sleep finally came was no box. It was no niggling doubt. No hint of temptation. It was Rumple’s pleased smile as he made his first seven letter word and evened the score.


	6. Take a Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In between rounds of Scrabble, Belle and Rumple learn a little bit more about this whole ghost thing. Practice makes perfect, and limits are reconsidered. It becomes clear that Rumple can't say no, and that the word 'date' has curiously gone missing from Belle's vocabulary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys keep amazing me with your encouragement and kindness.
> 
> I can only hope you'll forgive me, cause that tin box is staying firmly shut this chapter.

Working only three days of the week was a blessing if you had a ghost friend, as it turned out. Because it was Wednesday, Belle could stay up late tonight and sleep in if she wanted to - which she very much did.

Rumple had taken a liking to Scrabble, and that was perfectly fine by Belle. He took his time each turn, mulled over every possible option, calculated each and every possible variation, and it gave her the time to sit, stare and think.

So as this man sat in front of her with his head bowed over his Scrabble tiles, his long hair falling forward just a little bit to partly obscure the concentrated look on his face, Belle could take in the by now familiar sight. There was his long hair, as mentioned; brown with just a hint of grey, clearer than before now that he was only the slightest bit translucent. There were his dark eyes; a deep brown that almost looked pitch black from a distance. When he was concentrating like this, his tongue often made an appearance, just sticking out a little bit. Almost made her want to poke at it.

And his clothes were still the same clothes he’d worn the first night they met. Still that white shirt, still those trousers and suspenders, and still the very bottom of his legs always seemed a little bit more translucent than the rest of him, to the point that she couldn’t possibly make out what kind of shoes he was wearing. Were those the clothes he’d died in? Was that why he always wore them? She couldn’t possibly ask him that, of course. Not like that. But she was ever so curious about… Well, to be blunt: could he take them off? Not because she wanted to… you know… no. Not that kind of curiosity. Probably. But she couldn’t help but wonder if his shirt existed separately from him. As in, could he take it off, drape it somewhere over a chair, and would it stay there?

Or was it part of him? Permanently?

“Your turn,” he said, his amused, curious tone snapping her out of it - whatever it was - and she sat up straight, clearly startled.

“Sorry.”

He’d caught her staring again, but he didn’t seem to mind. She gave him a rushed smile and forced herself to stare at her tiles instead. She should have thought about her next move instead of contemplate Rumple’s outfit - now she looked a little bit lost and clueless.

“Something on your mind?”

“No, just… It’s nothing. It’s silly.”

“There’s something you want to ask,” he said with a little knowing smile.

“Am I that obvious?” she asked, trying not to look too guilty.

He chuckled softly and nodded, watching her fingers as she placed her tiles on the board.

“Ask away. If I were you, I’d be full of burning questions, too. In fact, I think you’ve shown remarkable self-restraint in that regard.”

“Are you sure?” Belle asked, scooting a little bit closer, as much as she could with the table between them. “Cause I don’t know if you can even answer it.”

“Well, now you’re making me nervous,” he said, sitting back, leaning on his hands. “Go on.”

Well, what harm could it do? Either the mystery would be solved, or it wouldn’t. As long as she didn’t outright ask whether he’d died in that outfit, it was completely harmless a question.

“Your clothes.”

“… Yes?”

Wait. What exactly was the question, here? Her mouth opened and closed but words refused to come out - only a pensive ‘uhh’ that made her sound ridiculously stupid. He frowned, looked down at what he was wearing, looked up again and raised an eyebrow.

“Too dated?”

“No! That’s not what I was-… Well, the suspenders, perhaps, but-”

“Alright.”

He was gone before she could finish her sentence or ask him what on earth ‘Alright’ meant, and he was back before she could even blink. Sans suspenders. As if he’d never moved at all, and he hadn’t, really, had he? Not in place, in any case. He regained his color in a few seconds and gave her a questioning look.

“Better?”

“Uh. You kind of answered my question,” Belle said softly, letting her eyes travel all the way from his white shirt, which still seemed the same, and - she sat up a little bit straighter to be able to see over the coffee table - down to his trousers which were now charcoal in color, “I guess. In a sense.” A leather belt, too.

“What was your question?”

Belle sat back down again, scratched her head and and mused, “I was just wondering about your clothes. Whether they’re part of you, or… Well, no, there’s no ‘or’, really, is there? Unless there’s a ghost shop for ghost clothes.”

He laughed softly and said, “I’ve been practicing that.” He sounded just a little bit proud about it, too.

“Practicing… changing your clothes?”

“Well, altering them,” he corrected her. “A while ago, I noticed I could. Entirely by accident.”

“How?”

“Thought of a different shirt color, and it just… happened.”

“That’s so cool!” she laughed. “So you could wear pretty much anything?”

“ _Anything?_ I suspect not. Don’t go crazy with requests, now. I’m not some doll to dress up.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she giggled, grinning from ear to ear. When she’d asked him to keep practicing his visibility, she’d meant with _her_. But now it turned out he’d been practicing on his own too, and it made something inside of her glow with fondness.

“Your turn.”

Rumple scribbled down her score and resumed staring at the board with pure concentration. The more Belle thought about it and the more Belle learned about him, the more she was intrigued by, well - his workings, she supposed. His physics. It seemed to her that, just like any human, he expended energy, which - if the laws of the known universe applied to ghosts as well in any sort of capacity - would mean that he had to acquire it, too. He didn’t eat, obviously, so it had to come from somewhere else.

He said he didn’t mean to become visible that first time she caught a glimpse of him, and that was during a thunderstorm. He even said he suspected that to be the cause of his sudden appearance. And when he came back to her in that attic, after having gone away for a while, that little light bulb flickered just a little bit. So, electricity? Maybe? He never seemed to mess with the lights in her apartment, though. Not when he faded in, or out, or touched something. Maybe electricity was just one part of it.

What she found so fascinating was that he had to concentrate to become visible and to become solid in some sense, and apparently, if he put his mind to it, he could actually change some physical aspects of himself, too. That wording was important - _if he put his mind to it_. From everything she’d learned about Rumple so far, it seemed that he used thought to manipulate his physical properties. He had said it himself; he thought of a different shirt color, and it just happened.

“You will tell me if I’m taking too long, won’t you, Belle?” he suddenly asked, giving her an apologetic look.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Regardless of what fueled him, thought seemed to be the way he expended his energy. Wasn’t that absolutely fascinating? Wouldn’t that mean that there were very little limits to what he could do? And why on earth did this man limit himself so much if all he had to do was think himself up a new pair of trousers and there they were!

The clothes weren’t important, though. He could wear a potato sack and it wouldn’t matter. It was the other things he denied himself, just out of habit. Lack of vision. Fear, perhaps. In particular, the absurd idea that he wouldn’t be able to leave this building. ‘I haunt this place, dearie,’ he’d said, laughing at her sincere inquiry. But if anyone should have been mocked to within an inch of consciousness, it was Rumple, for his complete lack of imagination.

He could move through walls, make himself visible and invisible at will, change superficial elements of himself with just a thought, but taking a bloody walk was too much for him?

To Belle, the idea that the human soul could be shackled to something material didn’t make any sense. None whatsoever.

“You said you’ve never left this building, right?” she asked.

“Mhm.”

“Have you ever tried?”

His hand froze just as he was putting down his first tile - just for a second. Well, that answered that question, didn’t it?

“I’ve always been here,” he muttered. “For as long as I can remember.”

“So that’s a no? You haven’t tried?”

He finished placing his tiles (lemurs) and gave her an obviously reluctant nod.

“How about we give it a try, then?”

“Why? Know a good ghost pub around here?”

“Rumple!” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Come on. Just outside the door. Just to see.”

“Waste of time, dearie,” he sang, dismissing the entire idea with just a quick flourish.

“How could you possibly know if you haven’t tried?”

For a moment there, his silence made her fear that she’d pushed him too far again. She may have been able to dance around the subject of death when she broached the clothing situation earlier, but his patience had to run out some time.

“I don’t see the point,” he muttered, shaking his head. But he wasn’t looking away; he was meeting her stare with his own, and it only strengthened her resolve.

“Just to satisfy my curiosity, then,” Belle pleaded. “Just to the courtyard.”

“For someone to see a half see-through man and have a heart attack? Maybe you’ll have two ghosts on your hand. Are you starting a collection?”

He’d only snapped at her for pushing him that one time, and not only had he apologized, he’d never done it since - and not for lack of probing questions on Belle’s part. But now he had taken to other tactics for deflecting her, and this joking, dismissive attitude was altogether more exhausting to deal with head on.

“Rumple! Be serious. You don’t have to be visible. If you talk to me, I’ll know you’re there.”

He sighed deeply and ran his fingers through his hair, and Belle was struck with a sudden desire to reach out and feel for herself. But no, God no, one thing at a time with this stubborn old ghost. She couldn’t unleash every single one of her questions and curiosities on the poor man at once and expect him to still want to show up for a game of Scrabble.

“Alright.”

“Yeah?”

“Grab your coat,” he grumbled, “I read the forecast. Supposed to be cold for early October.”

Victory was hers! Belle jumped up despite her leg being asleep yet again and limped about enthusiastically from where she’d draped her coat over a dining chair to where she last saw her scarf (on top of the book case for some unfathomable reason) until she was all bundled up and ready to go. Rumple had been laughing under his breath the whole time, but she didn’t mind. If he was laughing, then he wasn’t moping about heading out, and Belle didn’t care one jot that it was at her expense.

Belle headed down the hallway - her leg no longer asleep - and down the stairs, checking to make sure he was still there with her every once in a while (he’d made himself invisible right before they left her apartment) until she’d made it to the ground floor.

“Still here, Rumple?” she whispered.

“Still here.”

The emergency exit’s bright green light seemed to be staring right back at her. She knew the door wasn’t alarmed, but she knew it would fall shut and lock itself behind them unless she remembered to slide the cinder block that served as a door stop in place. She took a deep breath as if she was the one who couldn’t remember ever having left this building, and creaked the door open. Why was her heart beating so fast?

“Ready?”

“Mhm.”

Well, if he was, then so was she. Belle walked outside and was immediately glad Rumple had told her to bundle up - it was more than just a little chilly out tonight. She didn’t know why, but she held the door open for him, even though she knew he could just move through the door or the wall if he wanted to. She didn’t think he’d find that silly, though. He’d have done the same thing for her.

“Rumple?” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. She hadn’t meant for her voice to sound _that_ small. It was only a few seconds. Couldn’t have been more than ten, but it felt like an eternity, and she could have sworn her heart had stopped beating for the duration of Rumple’s silence.

“I’m here,” he finally spoke. The voice came from right next to her, softly, tentatively. Fragile, almost. Thank goodness. She held the door open with her foot and bent down to drag the cinder block in place, making sure not to keep it too wide open.

“You okay?” she asked.

Where to look when who you’re talking to can’t be seen? This was new to Belle, and it made her a little nervous until with a sudden pang of guilt she realized that this was new to him, too. And much, much bigger.

Rumple couldn’t remember ever having left this building. Who knew how long he’d been there up in that stuffy attic of his, reading books, fading into darkness and coming back with fewer pieces of his own puzzle. And she’d dragged him out to satisfy her own curiosity and to prove a point.

If only she could just reach out and touch him.

“The stars are out,” he said.

She looked up and saw the sky alight with many a star. The moon must have been somewhere behind them, obscured by the apartment building, maybe. Not a cloud to be seen, the autumnal storms that made this town their playground taking a little break to regroup and come back stronger later in the month.

“It’s nice,” he added.

Here, behind the U-shaped building, there was a little courtyard with a bench or two and some planters to liven up the place. Further up ahead, there was a small group of pine trees, mature but not ancient like the trees in the forest on the other side of town. These were planted on a small artificial hill some time ago to form a barrier between the apartment building and the highway and they served to reduce the noise and block the lights, for the most part. But the constant background noise of cars passing endlessly in the night had never bothered Belle. It was the soft, reassuring sound of life carrying on regardless of whether she’d had a bad day. A steady stream of people passing by and getting on with it. Driving home late from work, maybe. Road trip, perhaps. She didn’t much mind the lights, either, filtered through the trees. Where the pair of them stood now, it was still dark enough to look up and see the stars.

“I’m sorry if I was too pushy,” Belle softly said.

“No, no. This is good.”

And it didn’t sound like he was saying that just for her sake.

“Wanna stay out here for a while?”

“Are you cold?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Then yes. I’d like that.”

Belle moved towards the bench and sat down, trusting that Rumple would follow, and sure enough, she heard a soft sigh as he sat down next to her. She smiled to herself and drew her legs up on the bench to hug them to her chest, which seemed to make him laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. You just make an endearing sight, that’s all. Very… compact.”

“Well! If I could see you, I’d return the compliment. If it was one.”

“More of an observation that could double as a compliment.”

She giggled and for lack of anywhere better to look, Belle turned her gaze back to the stars. Now that she knew he was right next to her, it didn’t much matter that she couldn’t see him.

“I feel like a complete prick.”

“What?” she laughed.

“Making such a big deal of this.”

“But it was. I didn’t realize it until we got here, but this was huge for you. I pushed you into the deep end of the pool, didn’t I?”

She heard his soft laugh again, melting away a little bit of that concern, and then he said, “I think on the whole, my stubbornness and your enthusiasm probably balance each other out.”

In the corner of her eye was a sudden brightness, the telltale sign of his imminent reappearance, and ah - there was her stubborn old ghost. Belle smiled as he slowly became visible, gave him a quick wave and chirped, “Hi!”

“Hi.”

“Good to see you again,” Belle teased, biting down on her lip to try and keep up a poker face.

“Good one,” he huffed, his voice deep, his eyes rolling in their sockets despite his obvious appreciation of her terrible word play. Soon enough, the sarcasm had blown away on the chilly breeze and left him half grinning at her, asking, “This is safe, isn’t it? Everyone’s probably asleep, right?”

“Let’s say they are,” Belle replied, “cause I’ve missed your face.”

“Is that that compliment you were meaning to return?” His grin grew a little wider, even a little more lopsided, and it was utterly charming. What was it he’d said just before?

“More of an observation that doubles as one.”

Close enough. His grin was infectious and she felt it wash over her over, drowning that faint twinge of guilt and washing it away until all that was left was this moment’s sense of calm, of endless possibilities, of fresh air to breathe and bright stars like jagged little diamonds up above.

They were okay, the two of them. Maybe he was right - maybe they did balance each other out. Not in a very calm, zen sort of way. More in a ‘cruising along at a law-abiding speed until suddenly there’s a deer in the middle of the road and there was nothing else to do but careen wildly from side to side until they managed to get the car under control’ kind of way, but it seemed to be doing the trick. No road kill so far.

“The highway’s beyond those trees, yes?” Rumple asked her, pointing towards the pine trees clustered on the little hill up ahead.

“Yeah. Sometimes, when it’s warmer out and I can’t sleep, I go sit there for a little while and watch the cars go by. Pretty hypnotic.”

“Really?”

“Is that weird?”

“Yes!” he laughed, his face contorted in his over the top puzzled look. “In the middle of the night? In your pajamas?”

“Why not?” she replied with a shrug. “No-one ever comes there. There’s a fence, you know.”

There came no counter argument. He just looked at her with the remnants of the telltale expression of mild shock. And then he broke into a smile, shook his head just a little bit and looked away.

“Wanna go check it out?” Belle asked. Again, why not? They’d made it this far, tonight. The trees weren’t that much farther from where Rumple was previously convinced he was confined to.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t, though,” Belle replied. “You thought you couldn’t leave the building, and here you are.”

“Maybe I’m not chained to this building like I thought,” he admitted, knitting his eyebrows together in thought, “but something tells me that it’s important either way. I don’t know the first thing about myself, Belle. And I don’t mean my past; I don’t know how this body works, if you can call it that.”

_Of course you can call it that,_ Belle wanted to say. He’d touched her that night, and she’d felt him. That was no illusion. That was his body making contact with hers, and as she sat there and conjured up the memory of that feather light touch teasing her skin into goosebumps, she felt the urge to stop this conversation before it turned darker and ask him to touch her again, but she wasn’t quite sure where that thought came from, so she pushed it down and wished it away.

“All I have is wild speculation and intuition. Just like you, but with personal empirical data.”

“What’s your intuition telling you, exactly?”

“That I need to be near something familiar in order to focus. To keep myself together.”

“So that you don’t fade out again?”

He nodded. It made sense to Belle. The unfamiliar was taxing on the mind, ghost or not. The comforts of home at the end of a work day, the smell of your favorite meal cooking on the stove when you got home from school, the voice of someone you loved greeting you as you walked into the door; these were all things that allowed you to switch off the bits of your brain that kept you alert and on guard.

To Rumple, this building was all he knew and had known for as long as he could remember. But he wasn’t stuck to it, was he? They’d proven that, tonight. She couldn’t possibly imagine the energy it took to keep himself focused and she would never argue against the importance of a constant to keep you grounded, but…

Why not have that something be a _someone_ , instead? Belle could feel it when he was in the room, now. Well, she only really noticed the absence of it when he’d left, but still, that meant she could feel his presence, right? Just not very consciously. And why wouldn’t he be able to feel hers in return? Could that not be the little piece of familiarity he needed to feel safe and singular and whole, away from this place?

“I could be your familiar thing,” she tried, a careful, reassuring smile twitching the corners of her lips up just a bit.

When he smiled back at her, it felt like a surrender - but he didn’t nod, nor did he jump up and tell her to lead the way; he just looked at her as if he was reading her face like the pages of a book. He remained silent for a few more moments until finally he spoke, “If I give it a try, will that have been your last request of the night?”

“No.”

“ _No?_ ”

Belle giggled. Typical. Rumple always scoffed and huffed and rolled his eyes and grumbled all the way from his sputtering protests to the point where he rolled over and let her have her way, and right now, under the starry sky and under the spell of this good mood they’d created between themselves, she rather adored it.

“Just one more question. Once we get there.”

“What, exactly, would compel me to submit to one demand only to be served another?”

“Because secretly, you love it when I tell you what to do.”

“I most certainly do not!”

“Why are you smiling, then?”

He stared, his eyes wide and his mouth ever so slightly open in shock until he caught himself and forced an attempted careless smirk.

“You don’t play fair.”

“Not my fault you’re a sucker for this face,” she teased. “Now come on.”

She didn’t worry so much about throwing him into the deep end of the pool anymore. This ghost of hers could swim.

Belle stood up, took a few steps, then turned around to see him still sitting on the bench, smiling at her. “Come on!” she repeated, walking backwards slowly. She wasn’t going to go without him. She would never do that. But her slow backwards pace and her eyebrow raised in challenge were meant to draw him up from that bench and towards her, and it did the trick, because there he came, walking towards her with his silent footsteps and his eyes to the ground.

Belle would have held out her hand if she was sure he would have taken it.

But he was by her side, now, and they walked together. It didn’t take very long to walk the gentle slope and reach the top of that small hill, the two of them standing side by side under the stately boughs of a pine tree, staring at the view through the chain link fence that separated them from the endless flow of cars and trucks passing in the night down below.

“How do you feel?”

Belle looked at his profile, tried to see if she couldn’t read his mood there. He was still there, at least, even though his words had gone. He seemed to be deep in thought, but Belle was patient. As long as she could see him and know that what he had feared had not come true, and that she could be an anchor point for him. Safe.

“You were right.”

He turned his head to look at her. Just for a moment, so she could see a sudden softness in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. He bit his lip, let his eyes flit over her face, then turned to look at the passing cars.

“I don’t understand myself, Belle, so I don’t know how I could possibly let you know how it feels. All of these people, cars moving at different speeds, moving lights and a constant din… If I’d tried this on my own, I’d have… I don’t know. I’d have had to leave, or there would have been nothing left of me. I’d have been spread thin between every little visual impulse, every sound, and I…”

He trailed off and sighed.

“Like a filter. Or the lack of it, I suppose. I don’t have a body, like you do. All I have - all I _am_ is thought and perception. And it’s like the filters that keep you from feeling every fiber of clothing against your body as a distinct touch, or let you look at a tree and see a single shape of mostly one shade of green instead of millions of color variations in each individual leaf, or let you listen to a song and experience some sort of harmony instead of thousands of individual sounds without context just don’t know what to do with themselves when there’s no physical body to regulate.”

Belle could do nothing but stare. Not even nod to indicate that, in as much as it was possible, she understood. Rumple clearly took her silence for incomprehension, because he frowned, licked his lips and tried again.

“And if I don’t find a single stable point in this maddening mess, the filters just give up, fall away and let everything come over me all at once.”

Finally, she could manage a nod, and it seemed to soothe some of the worry lines on his face away, and in a softer tone, he continued, “But then there’s you. Familiar, like you said. A fixed point in this…”

Again, he couldn’t seem to find the right words for whatever it was he was so desperate to try and convey. He made a sort of frustrated sound in his throat, waved his hands in the air as if he were trying to tug out a sentence like a chain of colorful handkerchiefs from a clown’s mouth. “A fixed point in this onslaught of sensory information that lets me know that I’m not moving; everything else is, and nothing is spinning out of control. And each jagged little piece of that puzzle of flashing lights and loud noises clicks together and becomes harmless. No more sharp edges. It’s a single picture and it makes sense.”

His words had wrapped around her like a coiling rope, tightening around her body, keeping her in place and holding her together, tying herself to him, making her think for an intense, heart-stopping moment that she really, _really_ understood.

“Because there’s you. You make sense.”

She wanted to reach out and grab his hand. Fix him to her physically as well, even though that wasn’t what he was talking about when he said that she was a fixed point. She was very much aware of that. He didn’t need that.

But maybe she did. She felt her throat constrict with words she couldn’t even identify, and she had to swallow them all down before they became liquid and found other ways of escaping.

“So,” he said, dragging them away from the moment with a sharp sense of finality, “one more question, yes?”

Oh. Right. Yes. _Will you hold my hand before I start getting sad?_

No.

“Is there a reason you only come out at night?”

The thing about befriending a ghost is that after the initial shock and curiosity, it was strangely easy to take some things for granted, like the fact that he had only ever shown up after sundown. After all, all ghost stories happen at night, right? Spooky things happen in the dark, not in broad daylight. So she hadn’t really questioned it, until recently.

It seemed that he hadn’t, either. He looked a little surprised, which made her wonder what on earth he had expected her to ask instead. There was a pause in the stream of cars, leaving them standing in an unexpected moment of silence. She could hear the wind rustling the very tops of the trees. Made her want to take him away from this place and into the forest instead.

“I think… it’s easier to focus at night. When everything is dark and quiet.”

“But there’s no reason you couldn’t hang out with me during the day?”

“I suppose not. At night is easier, though.”

“Maybe you just need some practice.”

He sighed deep and gave her a look she could almost mistake for impatient, if not for the hint of a smile.

“I’d probably be less visible,” he explained. “For the same reason you’d draw the curtains to see your screen better.”

“I understand that, but you don’t always have to be visible with me. As long as I sort of know where you’re at.”

He looked a little unsure, chewing on his lip again until he caught her staring at his mouth, and she rushed to blurt out some more words.

“Don’t get me wrong - I love looking at you,” she added, feeling a bit of heat rush to her face. “I-I mean, it’s good to have a face to talk to. But if it wears you out, I can do without it. Not all of the time. But sometimes.”

There was absolutely no reason for her to be blushing right now.

“But don’t worry about it. I’m not going to ask you to try - not now. You were really sweet tonight, letting me push you around like this.”

Belle forced herself to look away and counted cars as they passed. One, two, then nothing for a few seconds until number three, four, five, six and seven all came in quick succession. She could feel his stare on her. Only fair, she supposed. She’d done the same to him.

“We’d better head inside. You look like you’re freezing.”

Really? Because her face was still just a little bit too hot for her own comfort. But she nodded, stuck her hands deep in her coat pockets, buried her mouth in her scarf and started to head down the hill, Rumple right by her side.

She didn’t have to check to see if he was still right there with her anymore. She could feel him. Like the faintest pull of a magnet right by her side. And again, she needlessly held the door for him, and he didn’t comment on it this time either. Just like he kept knocking on her door to announce his arrival, and Belle had stopped questioning it.

It was late. Later than she’d thought. She was tired, and she knew he could tell, because he didn’t sit down in front of his abandoned Scrabble tiles, he merely stood near the door, looking very much like he wanted to tell her something.

“Thank you for keeping that box safe,” he murmured, dragging his fingers through his hair, then letting his arms flop down to hang limply by his sides. That box, yes. That potential bomb shell in her desk drawer. Schrödinger’s backstory.

“Don’t mention it,” Belle softly said. He looked a little guilty, as if he suspected she thought him weak, and she wished she could throw her arms around his neck and just squeeze until she knew for sure that sad look of shame was gone. All she could do, though, was smile and hope he saw the meaning behind it; could somehow tell she didn’t blame him one bit for wanting to put off the inevitable. If his past was in there, and they took it out to behold, how could they possible get it back into the box? Can’t un-shine a light, whether you like what you see or not.

“How about I show up a little earlier tomorrow?”

“Really?”

“But I’ll probably fade sooner.”

“And I’ll totally understand,” she assured him, nodding furiously. “The whole ‘bright light on a television screen’ thing. I get it.”

“What time would you like me to show up?”

“Seven, maybe? I’ll have to make sure I eat before then, but I can do that. That’s not a problem.”

“I don’t mind you eating in front of me, Belle,” he chuckled. “I don’t even get the urge.”

“But isn’t that… rude?”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Alright, then. You can watch me eat frozen pizza.”

He gave her a look of complete disgust and said, “Belle, honestly, you might as well eat the cardboard box those things come in. They couldn’t possibly taste as good as freshly made pizza.”

“Well _I_ don’t care about _that_ ,” she countered, admittedly with a bit of a childish tone. Might as well have stuck out her tongue to finish the picture.

“Don’t you ever get the urge to cook?” he asked, incredulous.

“Not really. Do you?”

He smiled, shook his shoulders in a silent chuckle and looked down at his feet.

“Yeah, oddly. I think I must have cooked often. You know, before.”

That gave Belle an idea. If he really didn’t mind her nudging him along, encouraging him to reevaluate his limits, why not use this little urge of his to practice the physical aspect of him?

“Well, if you like, you can cook for me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed, shaking his head. But there was a little light in his eyes that wasn’t there before, and it didn’t escape Belle’s attention. She was determined now.

“I’m completely serious, Rumple! If you like to cook, and if you remember how, you’re more than welcome to use my poor, neglected kitchen. Just tell me what I need to buy, and I’ll bring it back for you.”

His tentative boyish grin betrayed his excitement and made Belle’s heart grow in her chest.

“What do you like to eat?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Spaghetti?”

She really didn’t care, to be completely honest; but now she was fixated on the idea of a personal ghost chef in her kitchen, and spaghetti seemed easy enough, right? Belle suspected he was planning it out in his mind already, because she saw his tongue peeking out from between his lips, like when he mulled over his next move during their games of Scrabble.

“I can do that,” he said, nodding to himself. “You might have to help me, though. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to do everything myself.”

“As long as you tell me exactly what to do.”

“That’d be nice for a change,” he muttered.

Belle couldn’t decide whether to roll her eyes or giggle, so she did both and waited for him to finish scribbling his shopping list on the chalk board hung right next to the door for little reminders she barely ever used.

“What are you smiling at?” he teased in a soft growl, his handsome half grin and his deep voice making something in her belly buzz and glow. Couldn’t remember his name, but _did_ manage to hold on to a spaghetti recipe. Or had he secretly read every cook book he could find?

“You.”

She didn’t want him to go, but she couldn’t stop yawning. From the way he stood there and smiled shyly at his feet, she knew he didn’t want to leave. Every time he left, she had to adjust to the strange, figurative chill that was the sudden absence of him. It never lasted very long, but she didn’t look forward to it. He was familiar, now. He was comfort.

“Belle?”

“Hm?”

“I think perhaps tomorrow I’ll open that box. After you’ve eaten. I can’t keep putting it off. I would like to, but I can’t.”

Belle heard resignation in his voice, and it was like a fist squeezing the blood out of her heart, the warmth from her insides. She couldn’t find her voice, never mind the words with which to answer him, so she just nodded. If she tried to smile, now, it would look forced and awful, it would falter and break apart in sharp little pieces, and she didn’t want that.

“Whenever you like.”

She had to adjust after he left. Each and every time. It was the strangest thing. It was like climbing out of a swimming pool and feeling the wind on your skin, or waking up from a nap in the park because a cloud swallowed up the sun and took away the sleepy summer heat. The feeling always went away. But it took a little while.

Belle carried their softly murmured good nights up with her to her bed and held them close until the keenly felt absence of him echoed out and slumber washed over her tired body.

She hadn’t had spaghetti in a while.


	7. Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle, who is starting to realize something about herself with a little unsolicited help from her friend Ruby, has a spaghetti dinner date with her ghost friend. Not that she'd call it a date. After, the contents of a certain box are revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm extremely relieved to be done with this chapter. Next chapter was/is not as exhausting to write. This might also be a good time to reiterate that I don't do unhappy endings, and I keep sadness to an absolute minimum. So bear with me. Plot needed to happen. Will get right back to the scheduled romantic tension in no time, because that's what makes the world go round.
> 
> And thank you all so much for your kindness. <3

Belle was on her third espresso of the day, which was probably not the best idea, but Ruby kept sliding them her way and the inevitable crash was nowhere in sight, so she just kept drinking them. Ruby didn’t much approve of the apparently scandalous amount of sugar she liked to pour into her coffee, but Belle was used to her looks of disapproval and disgust, and if she took the shaker away when she wasn’t looking, she’d just reach for one on a nearby table or reach over the counter for the little packets of sugar. Or the ones she kept in her purse. Really, there was no way for Ruby to ever stop her desecrating her coffee, but still she kept trying. It was like a little game, at this point.

The diner was practically empty at this hour, in between lunch and dinner, which is why the two of them could just sit and chat for a bit.

“How’s your story going?” Ruby asked, leaning forward with her arms folded on the counter.

“Good! Well, I haven’t actually worked on it these past few days, but I’m not giving up on it,” Belle said.

“Course you’re not,” Ruby replied, grinning bright. “It’s uh… not like you’ve got anything else to do when you’re not working at the library, right?”

“True!”

“Not like you’ve been secretly seeing some mysterious young man without telling your good friend Ruby all about it, right?”

Oh. Shit. Mysterious? Yes. Man? Also yes. Young? Yeah, no. Two out of three. And she wasn’t _seeing_ him. Not like that.

“No!” Belle cried out, painfully aware that her laughter sounded forced and she was probably about to dig herself into a very deep hole. Ruby could sniff her out from miles away. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, you know, the giant embarrassed grin on your face when I asked you that, for one.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing.”

“And the fact that you’ve got actual ingredients in your shopping bag right there,” Ruby continued, nodding to where she’d dumped her plastic bag full of fresh tomatoes, a small basil plant, ground beef and all the other things Rumple had asked her to buy.

“Why would that mean I’m seeing someone? I’m making spaghetti, Rubes.”

“You don’t cook.”

“I do tonight.”

“Is it a girl? Have you seen the light?”

“It’s not a girl,” she sighed.

“So there is someone.”

Good. Fucking. Grief.

“Just tell me who you’re cooking for!”

“For _me!_ I’m tired of frozen pizza and take-out.”

Uh oh. That was a blatant lie, and Ruby knew it. If Belle had just kept denying that she’d been spending time with someone, they would have been fine, but she’d gone and messed it all up, because Ruby knew just as well as she did that hell would sooner freeze over before Belle said no to Chinese food. And yup, Ruby was on to her. She’d tasted blood and was hungry for the truth. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips were pursed, and she was about to start tutting disapprovingly.

Before that could happen, Belle blurted out, “He’s just a friend, and I can’t introduce you to him yet.”

Ruby’s eyes widened, then she furrowed her brow in visible concern.

“Now, sweetie, I _know_ you didn’t go and get yourself involved with a married man or something equally messed up, because you’re not that kind of woman, so now I’m dying to know just why I can’t meet this ‘just a friend’ of yours.”

“He’s shy.”

“Shy?”

“Shy,” Belle repeated, nodding furiously.

“Well,” Ruby sighed, “that’s one thing he doesn’t have in common with Gaston, so that’s good.”

“Ruby! It’s not a romantic thing!”

“Yeah, I don’t buy it. Look at you.”

Belle raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side as if challenging Ruby to come up with some damn decent proof and come up with it right now.

Terrible idea.

“You’re blushing. The moment I mentioned some new guy, you smiled. _Then_ you got all flustered and defensive, and then finally you fessed up.”

“I didn’t fess up.”

“There’s a guy, right?”

“Yeah, but not like that!”

“You lied about there being a guy, then you changed your mind.”

Jesus Christ, the diner’s gain was the FBI’s loss. If Ruby’s pancakes weren’t the most delicious thing Belle had ever tasted in her entire life, Belle would have suggested a career as a private detective. But it didn’t mean anything. Well, sure, she’d lied at first, but that’s because she was dealing with a ghost, here! Not some random bloke she’d met in the supermarket. It hurt to have to lie like this, but there was no way Belle could tell Ruby about Rumple now. Not now they were so close to maybe figuring out who he was, and certainly not without his permission.

And she wasn’t _seeing_ him. She didn’t even really _know_ him.

“I’ll tell you all about him eventually, Rubes. I promise. Could you just trust me for now? He’s a friend, but it’s complicated.”

“Is he a good guy?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll back off. For now.”

Belle sighed in relief and showed Ruby a grateful smile. She was silent for exactly one beat, but then…

“But there’s no way in hell you don’t like him.”

“Rubes!”

She actually felt the blush this time, but she didn’t allow herself to dwell on it. This was completely ridiculous, Belle thought to herself as she hugged Ruby goodbye, grabbed her shopping bag and left the diner.

Absolutely, one hundred percent preposterous.

Sure, she loved spending time with him. He was funny and clever, and his little bad traits played well with hers. He was sweet, too. Tried to hide it under a layer of sarcasm sometimes, but the way he’d tucked her in that night she fell asleep during Harry Potter, and those subtle little suggestions like putting ice on her bruise, or wearing a coat because it was cold out just flat out gave him away as a caring, considerate man. He read, too, and that was always a bonus. And yeah, alright, Belle thought him incredibly handsome, with his lovely long hair and his intense eyes, and that mouth that she couldn’t help but glance at every so often. His voice was just… _nice_ , and she wouldn’t mind if he undid just one more button on his shirt but-

Oh.

Oh no.

The shock had made her stop right in the middle of the sidewalk, her heart jumping up as if it had planned a spontaneous field trip to her throat, her eyes the size of saucers.

Then came the panic, the all-consuming sense of impending doom.

And then came denial.

And then came an angry-looking man coming from the other direction, giving her a disapproving scowl because, like an idiot, she’d stood still in the middle of the sidewalk because she just realized she…

Nothing.

She rushed home and wished for a furious rainstorm to come and wipe her head clean of whatever it was that she’d just realized.

…

Her chat with Ruby had taken longer than she thought, so now Belle was rushing to get ready, flinging dresses onto her bed and making one hell of a mess up there on the mezzanine. But what did it matter? Rumple wouldn’t see it. Before her mind picked up on that last sentence and ran with it, Belle focused on the task at hand; figuring out which dresses she wanted to wear, and which dresses she didn’t mind spilling tomato sauce on, and whether there was an overlap at all. Turned out there wasn’t, so Belle settled for a dress that was dark enough to survive a splatter or two and cute enough to… Well, just cute.

She’d put the little potted basil plant on her desk near the window, the tomatoes, the parmesan cheese and the ground meat in the fridge, the olive oil, the onions and the pasta on the counter and all of her ill-timed realizations further back in the closet than last year’s halloween costume.

She was halfway down the ladder when she heard a knock on the door.

“You can just come on in, Rumple,” she called out.

“Good evening.”

“Hiya! Where are you?”

Belle looked around, tried to locate him by his soft laughter, but then there he was, standing by the door as if he was still waiting for permission to come in.

“Sorry. Forgot to turn visible.”

“That’s alright!”

He was right; he did look different in daylight. She could still see him clearly enough, though. He’d made out as if he’d barely be visible at all. He smiled his charming smile with a hint of shyness, and Belle felt her lips respond to the sight. She liked his smiles. Made her feel like smiling, too.

Belle wasn’t sure whether she was projecting, or sensing his mood, but the air felt different between them. He looked a little nervous, and it made her feel a little nervous, too. He was probably worried about having to focus on touching and moving things. Belle assumed he never really did much of that. The energy it took to hold a book and flip the pages was probably nothing compared to what she’d roped him into doing for her tonight.

Yeah. That was probably why he looked so nervous. And she picked up on that. She’d always been sensitive to other people’s moods. That was probably why she was a little nervous, too.

“Hungry?” he asked, moving to where she’d put the little basil plant.

“Yeah!”

He took a leaf between his fingers to inspect, then pushed the plant a little bit closer to the window.

“Did you have trouble finding anything on the list?”

“Oh, no. I think I’ve got everything. Had a lot more trouble finding something to wear. I’ve never really cooked before so I figured I’m bound to spill stuff all over myself. Took me a while to figure out which dress I wouldn’t mind ruining.”

“And that’s the dress you went with?” he asked, a confused frown on his face. “That’s the one you wouldn’t mind ruining?”

“Well, no. I’d mind. I mean, out of all the other options, I’d be least upset if I poured tomato sauce all over this one. Why?”

“You look-… I’m just surprised. It’s a really nice dress.”

She looked… what? Did he almost say something, there? Cause that was cute. Really, really cute. _Too_ cute. She couldn’t resist. Felt a certain mood start to bubble up from her belly, making her feel entirely more playful than the situation called for.

“You like it?” she asked, allowing herself exactly _one_ slightly flirtatious grin for the evening. Just one. No more. He nodded, gave her another nervous smile and turned away.

“I’ll be extra careful, then.”

“You’ll be alright,” he mumbled.

He was opening her cupboards, now, looking for something or other and failing to find it.

“Pots? Pans?” he asked.

“Oh! The cupboard to your right.”

“Aha.”

He took out one great pot, then a smaller saucepan and placed them both on the stove.

“Colander?”

“Uh. The hole-y thing, yeah?”

“The holy thing?”

“Holes,” Belle clarified. “The thing with holes.”

“That’s the one,” he said, obviously entertained by her poor grasp on the terminology, grinning to himself. “Please tell me you’ve got one.”

“I do, I think.”

She opened the cabinet she almost never opened. The one that had all of the stuff she thought she’d never use. There was a cheese grater and an immersion mixer in there, too.

“Got it!” she chirped.

“Put it next to the sink, for now, if you don’t mind. Why do you have all of these things if you never cook?”

“House warming gifts,” she muttered, shrugging.

“From people who don’t really know you, I assume.”

“Yup. Acquaintances, mostly. Ruby, on the other hand, gave me wine and a -”

Nope. Oh, God. Too nervous earlier, too loose-lipped now. He gave her a questioning look, one eyebrow raised.

“Nothing. Just wine,” she mumbled, willing down the rush of blood to her face. Rumple looked a little confused, still, but then he shrugged and nodded towards where she’d put the rest of the stuff.

“I’ll slice the onions,” he said.

As she watched him open her cutlery drawer, Belle found herself distracted by the thought that perhaps she could reach out and touch his fingers now that he’d made himself temporarily solid to manipulate objects. Would he freak out? Probably.

“What do I do?”

“You can start by filling that pot over there with water.”

“Yes, chef.”

Rumple rolled his eyes but Belle spied his little smirk before he could hide it with his hair when he bowed his head over the drawer again.

“What are you looking for, exactly?”

“A knife. To slice the onions, like I said. I know you said you never cook, dearie, but you do know what a knife is, I hope,” he teased. Good, he was starting to loosen up a little bit, which meant that she could, too.

“Yeah yeah, alright, smart arse. Excuse me for not remembering every word you say,” she teased right back. She cast a sidelong glance his way and found him smirking over the onions, peeling them at an impressive speed.

Belle turned off the faucet, hauled the heavy pot up and _meant_ to hand it over, but Rumple took a step back and nodded towards the stove. Alright then. Would have been easier had he taken it from her because he was standing between the sink and the stove, but it was heavy as hell, so Belle was quick to shuffle past him and put it down anyway. Awkward.

“Could you add a bit of salt to the water, please?”

“Sure.”

He was slicing and dicing the onions like a pro, and even from a distance Belle could feel her eyes tearing up. Suddenly, she was grateful he hadn’t asked her to do it.

“What now?”

“You can chop some basil.”

“How much?”

“A handful should do.”

He fished another knife she’d never used out of the drawer. Belle thought he was going to hand it to her, but then right as she reached out, he pulled it back and slid it over the counter instead.

“Thanks,” she offered, a little bemused. Was he going out of his way to avoid physical contact? She kept wanting to look over at him so she could gauge his mood (maybe she’d misread him and he wasn’t nervous, but upset about something) but she couldn’t really look away from her task; she didn’t want to cut her finger and bleed all over dinner.

“Now,” he said, drizzling a bit of olive oil into the saucepan, “I’m going to brown the onions and the meat. Perhaps you could dice the tomatoes if you’ve finished with that basil.”

“Will do.”

He was fiddling with the knobs on the stove, now, and it seemed like he couldn’t quite find the right one. Belle took a moment to enjoy his adorably puzzled puppy eyes flitting over the stove in a mild panic until she decided she couldn’t risk him twisting off a dial or getting annoyed, so she dropped what she was doing and joined him at the stove.

“Look, you twist this and press this at the same-”

What the hell? Rumple had practically jumped away from her and now he had his arms folded and was staring at her hands hovering over the stove as if nothing had happened. Right, okay, that was enough of that.

“Rumple.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I have cooties, or…”

“W-what?” he sputtered.

“You’re really, really, ridiculously careful not to touch me, and it’s getting a little bit weird. What’s up with that?”

He was speechless and a little vulnerable looking, and Belle almost regretted having brought it up. He shrugged and looked down at his feet for a few seconds, as if the words he was looking for were there on the floor, ready for him to pick up and fire right back at her.

Belle waited patiently, and after a few more seconds, Rumple decided to go with, “Isn’t it just common courtesy to try not to bump into people?”

“That’s not what this is, though.” _But good try_. “When you handed me that knife, you put it down right before I could take it. Like you almost forgot you didn’t want to touch me.”

“Only an idiot would let someone take a knife by the blade,” he muttered with a huff, folding his arms over his chest in defiance.

“Wouldn’t take that pot from me, either,” Belle added.

“I haven’t lifted anything heavy for ages. I could have dropped it on your toes.”

“And you practically jumped away when I went to show you how the stove works.”

No swift riposte this time. He just stood there and chewed his lip for a moment, drawing Belle’s eyes to his mouth in a way that threatened to distract her from the matter at hand. She was right, wasn’t she? He’d been trying his very best to keep away from her - physically, at least. Why, though? They’d touched before, hadn’t they? Admittedly, that very first time she _did_ gasp, and it did seem like he took that to mean she was uncomfortable, or weirded out, or something to that extent, but she’d asked him to touch her again, hadn’t she?

“You don’t have to go out of your way to avoid touching me,” Belle softly said. “I really, really wouldn’t mind if we accidentally touched.”

 _On the contrary._ Wait, what? No, no, she’d shoved all of that back into the closet along with the dresses she didn’t want to spill anything on. This was a purely practical matter. This dancing around wasn’t practical, for God’s sake! This kitchen was tiny, and there wasn’t much room to maneuver, so they could very well accidentally make contact and if that happened, she didn’t want him to start freaking out.

Did _he_ not like her touch? The thought almost made her heart sink straight down to her stomach.

“Or… Did it bother you? When we touched, that night?” she asked, swallowing a little lump of completely unwelcome emotions in her throat.

He looked at her for a moment, offered her an apologetic smile and shook his head as he gave that stove one more try. “Not at all,” he said, and her heart sang in relief.

“Well then, it’s high time you stop dodging me like I’m some sort of leper, I think.”

His laughter was as welcome a sound as the stove finally clicking and the flames sucking in air and flaring up.

“Point taken. All the same, I think it’s best if you sit over there and wait for now. I can take it from here.”

“You sure?”

“I did promise to cook for you, didn’t I? And I wouldn’t want you to ruin that dress.”

There was something about his voice that told Belle exactly what he meant.

“I’m in your way,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him in a playful glare.

“Yes, you are,” he replied with a little grin. “Thought you’d never catch on.”

“Alright, fine!” she sighed. But instead of leaving the kitchen as he’d suggested, Belle hoisted herself up on the island counter, one leg crossed over the other. Rumple gave her the strangest look, and she shrugged, smirked and said, “I wanna watch.”

It was his turn to sigh, now, but his fond smile more than made up for that little bit of feigned exasperation. Belle never knew how fascinating it could be to watch someone cook. She loved to watch his hands as he chopped and sliced and stirred, the focused look on his face, the ease with which he moved around her kitchen as if he’d made her spaghetti a million times before. Strange thing, muscle memory. Especially since there weren’t really any muscles to speak of.

He wasn’t very talkative while he cooked, but Belle didn’t mind. He looked handsome, doing his thing like he was, and it was good to see him so confident. Made her feel warm inside. Made her want to…

God, this nonsense again. Belle wished Rumple didn’t need two weeks’ bloody notice before she could touch him. The time they’d been spending together had taught her just how tactile a person she was, and each and every time she caught herself wanting to touch him and remembered with a little pang of disappointment that she couldn’t, the lesson was driven home yet again. Simple, friendly touches were impossible. A hand on his shoulder, a little shove of the elbow when he was poking fun at her, a tap on the arm to get his attention; if she acted on these impulses as they welled up, she’d go straight through him. But if she asked him to make himself solid each time she wanted to touch him, the moment would shrivel up and die a charmless death, and that would be that.

“Give this a taste,” came the deeper voice he always used when he was deeply immersed in what he was doing. His ‘shh, I’m thinking,’ Scrabble voice. He’d moved to stand in front of her and slowly brought a wooden spoon with a delicious looking red sauce up to her lips.

Screw it.

Belle tried to take as deep a breath as she could without it being too obvious, then reached up and wrapped both hands around his. Warm. Soft. A feeling in her stomach like when you _think_ you feel your phone vibrating in your pocket but you’re not quite sure. Something a little bit like that. In her stomach. Not her pocket. She wasn’t making any sense.

Was he okay? She glanced up quick to make sure she hadn’t freaked him out too much, and he did look a little bit surprised, but not enough to make Belle want to let go just yet. Because this felt… good. It felt normal. That unpleasant tightness in her belly, that childish frustration at having to stifle these urges that came so, so natural to her, melted away like cotton candy on her tongue the moment she felt him on her skin.

Of course, this was all justified; she just wanted to make sure he didn’t drop the spoon and get his bolognese sauce all over the dress he liked. Maybe his hand was shaking just a little bit. Well, it wasn’t, but who’s to say it wasn’t about to?

Sure, she could have just taken the spoon.

But…

God, who was she even trying to kid, here? Herself? She’d been thinking of touching him ever since they discovered they could, and… Ugh. This was all Ruby’s fault. Bloody perceptive, relentless woman. If it weren’t for her, Belle could still pretend that she didn’t have a huge, ridiculous, absolutely hopeless crush on him.

She leaned in, pursed her lips and blew, then tasted his concoction from the wooden spoon and slowly - reluctantly - let her hands fall away from his. His eyes were still a little wide. Could she spy him swallow? Was that a nervous thing? At least he hadn’t let her hands and the spoon drop right through him.

“This is absolutely delicious, Rumple,” Belle said as he retreated to the stove, where he’d left the sauce simmering.

“Enough salt in there?”

“Could do with a bit more.”

He finished in silence, only speaking up to ask her if she could drain the pasta for him; he wasn’t sure if he could carry that much weight, and once again to tell her to have a seat at the dining table; he’d be right there with her dinner.

And there he came, a proud smile on his face, admiring his own handiwork all the way from the kitchen to where she was sat at her small round dining table, presenting her with an absolutely beautifully dressed plate. No utensils, though, which she hinted at with a raised eyebrow and a giggle, sending him rushing back to the kitchen mumbling apologies.

“Aren’t you going to sit?” she asked. Rumple looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself in this situation; his gaze moving from her plate, to her eyes, to the chair next to her and opposite her and even the bloody sofa, and it was adorable, but Belle knew he was probably genuinely fretting, so she patted the dining chair next to her and laughed, “Come on, chef.” He rolled his eyes again, but sat down where she’d asked.

And okay, it _was_ a little awkward to be the only one eating, at first. But then Belle started describing the tastes and the textures - singing his praises, essentially - and that proud look on his face made its return. At one point during the meal, Rumple stood up and went into the kitchen. When she asked him what he was doing, he refused to answer, but all became clear when he brought back a couple of napkins.

“You’re, uh, painting your face red,” he said. Oh. Yeah. She was a mess when she ate sometimes.

“Yeah, that tends to happen,” she admitted, taking a napkin from him, wiping the corners of her mouth. “It’s a compliment, though!”

“Your chin, too,” he said. He sat down again with his body angled towards her this time, and a strange, absent smile tugging the corners of his lips gently up. If he weren’t looking at her with such fondness in his eyes, Belle probably would have been embarrassed to be displaying such messy table manners, but he kind of… seemed to think it was cute.

The light in the room was different now that the sun was setting low. It made the food look even more delicious, and Rumple a little more warm and a little more _there_. The sun had been out all day, casting gorgeous light on autumnal colors and the way it made the red brick walls in her apartment glow seemed to be distracting Rumple every once in a while. Belle had forgotten that the man probably hadn’t seen daylight in quite some time, for all he could remember. She wondered if they could take a walk during the day, some time. That would be nice. He’d have to be invisible, of course, and she would look like a crazy person talking to herself, but she didn’t care about any of that. What other people thought of her. She cared about Rumple.

“This is so, so good,” Belle practically moaned. It was more of a growl, maybe, because it really _was_ good, and she felt like stuffing her face with it in a rather unladylike, more wolflike manner. She didn’t, though. Manners - she had a few.

“Better than pizza?” he asked.

Belle almost spat out her last mouthful laughing so hard.

“No!” she cried after she’d swallowed down what she’d almost spat out. “Nothing’s better than pizza!”

“Oh, Belle. You wound me,” he said, his hand over his chest. She saw his shoulders shake with stifled laughter.

“Oh shut up,” she sang fondly, “you’re a brilliant cook and you know it.”

That proud smile was almost a smug smirk, now. Rumple had fed her belly, and she had fed his ego in return. Good. He needed a bit of fattening up in that area. Actually, while she was at it, she might as well put a little salve on another one of his sore spots, namely: the very reason he disappeared on her that Sunday night and made her feel the most alone she’d felt in years.

“I hung out with Ruby today,” Belle said, pushing her empty plate to the side and sliding her chair a little bit closer to his.

“Oh?”

He looked puzzled; his brow wrinkled, his gaze a bit blank. Everything about him screamed, ‘And why the hell are you telling me this?’ Just as she expected.

“Just mentioning that in case you still think you’re the figurative straw in my social life that’ll break the camel’s back. Not that I’m thrilled that I’ve made myself the camel, here.”

For a second, there, Belle saw something real in his eyes, but oh, he was quick to put on a mask and wave away the entire first part of what she’d just said with an elegant flourish.

“Oh, surely it’s not that bad. Have you ever seen the eyelashes on a camel? Stunning.”

“Don’t try and distract me!”

That probably would have sounded more authoritative had he not succeeded in making her giggle. He smirked, and that was quite possibly even more distracting, because it was the one that was a little bit lopsided and made his eyes look like swimming pools with black tiles instead of blue, glittering in the sun. He kept up her stare for longer than she thought he would. His smirk slowly faded to a smile, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes subsided.

“I’m not going to disappear again, Belle. Not like that.”

There was a weight behind his stare, now, and the words didn’t feel like a lie to her. Not at all. He looked too sad for that. Why did he look sad? It wasn’t like she could just ask him that. He’d just make a joke of it. Or maybe, if Belle was a little bit more honest with herself, she would realize that she was afraid to find out the answer.

“Hey,” Belle finally said when the silence became a little too deafening, too suffocating for her to bear. He raised an eyebrow, and she leaned a little closer to say, “Maybe that tin box is where you keep your spaghetti bolognese recipe.”

Well. At least she’d made him smile.

“About that,” he said, his voice soft and his eyes to the table. He didn’t even need to finish his sentence. Belle knew “I know I said I would open the box tonight, but…”

“It’s alright. You don’t have to explain. It’s your decision.”

“You don’t mind holding on to it, do you, Belle?”

“Course not! It’s safe here with me. I can show you, if you’re worried.”

“I’m not.”

Rumple’s fond smile was the best dessert she could have hoped for, and she only hated herself a _teensy_ amount for thinking a thought as sappy as that. They played Scrabble for a bit, talked about her scandalous lack of interest in all things culinary, and he had the courtesy to start fading only after they’d washed the dishes and cleared away the pots and pans together. It was strange to say goodbye to him when she wasn’t even sleepy yet, but she supposed she had to.

What was she going to do with all of that nighttime all to herself? She shouldn’t have had that many espressos.

Thanks a lot, Ruby.

…

He couldn’t help himself. He shouldn’t have put it off. He should have stuck to his word and opened that box after she’d had her dinner. This? Was absolutely ridiculous. She was asleep, and here he was in her apartment, knocking on the door because he figured it would have been less disturbing than had he just called her name. But she didn’t budge. So he knocked again, and this time he heard the rustling of fabric and the creaking of a bed.

“Belle? It’s me.”

“Mm? Rumple?”

“Dumb question, but were you by any chance awake?”

Of course she wasn’t.

“Myeah, I’m up. What’s the matter?”

_Liar._

“You were asleep. I’m sorry, I’ll just go. Get back to sleep. I’ll come back in the morning.”

“No, Rumple, it’s fine. I’m up. If you knew how much coffee I had today… Hold on. Can you hit the light down there? I can’t find my phone.”

He flicked the light switch and heard her move about up above.

“Are you decent?” he asked. Did she just laugh at that? Why was that funny?

“These pajamas have seen better days, but yeah. Gimme a moment, I’ll be right down.”

“What’s up?” she asked as she climbed down from the mezzanine. He waited for her to reach the floor - it seemed the right thing to do - then said, “I need to know what’s in that box.”

“Now?” she yawned, stretching her arms over her head. He looked away in case her pajama top rode up, hoping he wasn’t too obvious about it. She’d just laugh at what she thought was prudishness.

“I’ll take it up to the attic and look on my own. Don’t worry about it. You just go back to sleep.”

She stepped a little closer on her tiny bare feet. Her tired blue eyes squinting against the bright light behind him. That was right - he was translucent. He barely blocked any light.

“Do you want to do it alone?” she asked. God, he wished she hadn’t asked that. Wished she’d just sent him on his way, told him to leave her alone and let her get some sleep for a change. He could lie, tell her he wanted to do this on his own, and he could spare her the fallout of whatever it was that was in there.

But something deep inside of him told him he would need a friend when that lid came off and something or nothing came spilling out. An anchor point. Someone who wanted him here, for whatever misguided reasons.

“No,” he said softly, shaking his head. “I don’t want to do it alone.”

Maybe not denying himself would be the right decision this time around.

“Then don’t be silly. I’m up, and if now’s the right time, we’re doing this.”

“Thank you.”

Belle shuffled her way over to the desk, pulled open the bottom drawer and slowly, carefully, took out the tin box.

“Maybe we’d better sit down for this,” she murmured, shuffling towards the sofa. “At least, I think _I_ should. I’m kind of nervous.”

He didn’t need to sit down, but he knew she wanted him to, so he sat on the opposite end of the sofa and watched her settle down with the box in her hands, holding it as straight as she could. How sweet she was, taking such care of some rusty old box because he’d asked her to. As if it were precious. Once she’d settled, she gave him an encouraging little smile and held out the box for him to take over, but he curiously found himself unable to reach out and take it.

“Will you do it?” he’d mumbled before he even really knew that’s what he really wanted. Was this selfish? Asking her to do this? Dumb question - of course it was. Of course. “Open it, I mean.”

“Really?” she asked, trying her very best not to look too disappointed by his cowardice. He didn’t even see a hint of disapproval. She was very good at that. _’Or, you know, she doesn’t think you’re a coward’_ , some small, weak voice in the back of his head called out.

He nodded.

“Of course I will, if that’s what you really want. But… why?”

_Because I’m a coward._

He shrugged, bit his lip, tried to come up with an answer that made a lick of sense. “Whatever it is, might sound better coming from you,” he mumbled. He could see her smile even with his eyes fixed to the box.

“Alright. Ready?”

_No._

“Yes.”

Belle sat cross-legged on the sofa, facing him. He just sat with his back straight and stared at his vague reflection in the pitch black of the television screen. He heard the hinges on the box scream, and then a soft, barely audible gasp that almost made him break his resolve and turn to see what she’d found.

“Rumple,” she said. “Look.”

From her voice, it sounded like she was smiling, so he sighed, turned his head and found her hand nearer than he’d thought. And she was holding out a little toy car.

“You drew that!” said Belle.

“Did I?”

“Yeah!”

She didn’t pull away, so he took the little car from her hand and simply held it. Was he supposed to know what this was? Was this supposed to trigger something?

“Nothing?” she asked.

“No.”

“It’s a Ford Model T. I looked it up. Well, my father did.”

“Still nothing, I’m afraid.”

It was a lovely little thing, but it didn’t mean anything to him. He could feel a certain fondness for it, but nothing substantial. It was a nice, cute little car. And (he put it on the table and flicked it with his finger) it drove along pretty smoothly.

“There’s just an envelope in here.”

“Go ahead.”

He could stare at the little car instead of his sad reflection in the television screen, now. He heard the rustling of paper, then silence for a moment.

“It says ‘Mr. Gold’ on the back. Is that your name?”

He shrugged, because he didn’t know. Could be? This was turning out to be a bit of a dead end, wasn’t it? Perhaps he was naive to think that if whatever was in that box belonged to him, he would remember it.

“I’m going to open the envelope now, okay?”

“That’s fine.”

The envelope made a dry noise as her dainty fingers opened it. This time, he felt his gaze drawn to it like a magnet. Whatever she’d pulled out of there, it looked like she hadn’t expected it. Her eyes flitted from the little square of paper to his face and back again a few times.

“It’s a picture. I’m going to see if there’s anything written on the back.”

When he gave her a nod, telling her it was alright, she turned it around, frowned, licked her lips and gave him a concerned look he didn’t much like.

“Rumple? Does the name ‘Neal’ mean anything to you? Is it yours?”

“Neal,” he whispered. His eyes grew wide, he shook his head and moved closer on the sofa to snatch the picture from her hands and hold it up in front of his ever widening eyes. Slightly yellowed edges. Black and white. A young boy, looked to be in his early teens. Dark hair, beautiful big grin on his face. He stood straight and proud in front of a railing and behind him was the sea. And all of the sudden his head was full of screaming seagulls and laughter.

But before the seagulls, before the sea, there was a warm bundle squirming in his arms, wee fingers grabbing at his face, smiles and toy cars, leather footballs and scraped knees, sandwiches and fishing trips, bedtime stories and good night kisses, rushed mornings and warm milk and sweets and car rides and village fetes and starry summer nights camping, rainy days and wellies in puddles, and _his heart hurt_ ; he felt it in his chest and it hurt so much he almost forgot that he was dead and her voice barely reached him over the sounds and the pain in his chest and the jagged rock in his stomach but he heard it - he heard her voice call out to him, and he answered, but he didn’t know what. He barely heard his own voice. It was a dry croak. His boy. _My boy._

“Y-Your son?”

He jumped up from the sofa and began to pace the room, his hands in his hair, his eyes to the floor. His son. Neal. His boy. Where was he? Why was there nothing beyond that smile and the sea and those glimpses of happiness?

“Belle, I need to find him. I need to know he’s alright. I need to know.”

“I can help you look for him! We can find him, Rumple!”

“It’s too late… it’s too-”

“Rumple, listen, it’s alright!”

“It’s too late, Belle! How could he possibly still…”

He wasn’t here. He was nowhere near here. He was gone. Not like him. He could feel that he was gone, and that’s what made his chest hurt so much. Right where his heart should be, where there was nothing and had been nothing for God knows how many years.

She’d said something again. He saw her lips move, but he hadn’t heard her. The pain was louder than her voice was soothing. She knew, somehow, and repeated herself, “When was he born?”

“I can’t remember… I can’t even remember when my boy-”

The words choked him and he hadn’t taken a breath in decades.

“That’s okay, Rumple. That’s okay. Listen to me, it’s alright. We don’t need his date of birth to find him. We’ve got his full name. It’s Gold, I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t see how you could find him, Belle, I c-can’t feel him. I can’t feel him.”

“Listen. Rumple, listen to me. I’m going to Google him. We should at least be able to find something. If we don’t, I’ll go to the library first thing in the morning. The town archives are in the basement and I have full access. Okay?”

The pain died down from a raging inferno to something Belle’s voice could reach him through, so he nodded to tell her he’d heard this time. She hurried to her desk and turned on her computer.

“Look for an obituary,” he mumbled, sinking back down into the sofa, his hands in his hair. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him. He’d barely heard himself.

“Alright,” she said. She glanced at him over her shoulder. He could see it from the corner of his eye. But that toy car was staring at him. An accusation on four little wheels. He’d forgotten his son. This car was his. He’d bought it for him. He adored it. Took it with him everywhere he went.

He heard her fingers tapping keys, clicking buttons, her breath catching in her throat. That was fast. The wonders of modern technology.

Not as fast as his own intuition.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Rumple…”

“Tell me.”

She pushed her chair away, sat down next to him on the sofa. Too close. Not close enough.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Eleven years ago.”

Eleven years. Eleven fucking years. He’d been here for more than that. He could have looked for him. He knew he could leave, now. He could have gone and talked to his boy. His only child.

“Where?”

“Here in Maine.”

He wasn’t even halfway across the world. He was right here. He died right here. Without him.

“Rumple, I’m so sorry.”

“I forgot my own son.”

“Rumple, you-”

She’d reached for his hand and she’d gone straight through him, and she pulled her hand back as if she’d been burned. He couldn’t even look at her. How could she look at _him_?

“All of this time he was alive, and I didn’t go look for him. My own son.”

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

“I’m a coward. I didn’t want to open that box.”

“You couldn’t have known what was in there. You didn’t willfully forget your son.”

“But I did. I must have. And I…”

“You didn’t even know the box existed. You weren’t even sure it was yours.”

“I forgot my own son, Belle!” he cried.

Did she not understand that? No, she didn’t have a child of her own. He would bet all of the money in this sick and tired world that she wouldn’t forget her own child like he had, but right now, she couldn’t understand.

“You forgot _everything!_ You can’t blame yourself for this.”

“No, Belle. My son was all alone in this world. He died alone, because of me. I could have been there.”

“No, he didn’t! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! He had a son!”

What? He looked to see her cautiously smiling face, tears in her fierce blue eyes. Why was she crying? Why wasn’t he? What did she just say?

“You have a grandson, Rumple. Your son was born in 1914. He was 89 years old when he passed away. The obituary said he was surrounded by family and loved ones. He went peacefully.”

His boy had a son of his own. His boy had a son. A family. He wasn’t alone in this world.

“And… he’s still alive? What’s his name?”

“The obituary mentioned one son, and his name is Sam,” Belle muttered. She was off to her computer again. “And I’m going to look him up now.”

Sam. His boy Neal had his own little boy. Sam. He sat there, tasting the name on his tongue. That was a good name for a boy. Had Neal chosen it? Had the boy’s mother? What was his mother like? Were they happy?

“He owns a jewelry store here in town.”

Oh. She’d sat back down next to him again. He hadn’t noticed. Things were a little bit looser around him - time, sound, light. There was too much to think about. To feel. This was too much and it was getting difficult to focus.

“So he… he’s still alive?”

“Yes! Let’s go see him tomorrow, Rumple. I don’t have to work. I’ll drive us there.”

“I can’t, Belle.”

“Of course you can! Don’t you want to see him, at least?”

“I can’t leave.”

“You can, and I’ll be with you every step of the way. You said I was an anchor.”

“You are.”

He shouldn’t have told her that. Shouldn’t have made her responsible for his stability like that. Shouldn’t have shown himself to her. Shouldn’t have let her voice rouse him from sleep. Shouldn’t have promised not to disappear on her again. Pain went away when that deep sleep came, but he’d promised.

“Let me take you to go see your grandson. Please.”

His son was dead. He had a grandson. He still couldn’t… couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember much more than those flashes of warmth and content. If it weren’t for her voice, her eyes, even the sound of her breath, he would have been gone.

“Will you let me do that for you, Rumple?”

She was softness, promises, light. Was it so wrong to take what she kept offering? Was she finite? He didn’t want to use her up.

“All you have to do is show up here in the morning.”

“It… _is_ morning.”

“Or you can stay!” she said, inching a little closer, bringing her light nearer to his tired old eyes. “I’ll stay up with you. In the morning, when his shop opens, we’ll go.”

“No, Belle. You need to sleep. I dragged you out of bed, I won’t have you staying up for me too.”

“I don’t mind,” she cooed. “I care about you, Rumple. I wanna make sure you’re alright.”

“Please,” he sighed, forcing down whatever that feeling was her words had almost teased out of hiding. “Thank you, but I’d prefer it if you just got some sleep. I need time to think.”

She was silent for a moment, but then she nodded. He couldn’t look at her, now. She’d be pouting just a little bit. He’d want to throw down his arms and do what she bade him. He didn’t know why she wanted to do this for him. He didn’t know why he wanted to take her offer. What was the point?

“I’ll be up at nine. If you’ve decided you want to go see him, or if you just want to talk, you can just show up. No need to knock.”

He was all out of words. He didn’t know what to do. He faded out and he had almost walked through the wall and into the hallway when he heard her voice call his name.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering… Do you remember anything else, now?”

“No.”

He really didn’t. He remembered Neal, but not all of him. If Neal’s name was Gold, then so was his, but not because he remembered.

“Alright. That’s alright. Good night, Rumple.”

“Good night, Belle. And thank you. For finding him.”

“That’s what friends do.”

He had a grandson. He had a friend.

But he’d lost his son.


	8. The Ghost's Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle takes Rumple to see his grandson, who, as it turns out, likes to tell stories. What the box didn't tell them, his grandson will. Then, of course, there's the aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter needed to be a little longer. As always, thank you all so much for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, saying nice things about this fic on Tumblr (I see you!) and generally being amazing. This chapter is important, and I hope I don't disappoint.

Belle wasn’t exactly sure how much sleep she’d gotten, but it couldn’t have been much. She knew it was around 4 am when Rumple went back up to the attic, and she didn’t fall asleep right away. She hadn’t really expected to, though; there was too much to think about. Rumple had at least one descendant, and he was right here in town. She wondered if they looked alike. Same nose, maybe? Or eyes.

When she did manage to finally fall asleep, she dreamed. And she wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling it was about him. In her dream she was in a warm, dimly lit room full of happy, carefree people, and she was watching them chat and laugh. A party, maybe. But the entire time she stood there, watching and grinning, there was an arm around her shoulders, a warm body against hers, her own arm around that person’s waist, and it was almost a little too hot, in that way that tends to happen if you’ve had a glass of wine and the room is packed. They fit together perfectly. She was happy. She didn’t see a face, but she knew it was him.

And when her alarm went and that dream faded out, the warmth dwindling and her grin shrinking, there was guilt. He’d just remembered and lost his son, and she was… infatuated. There she was, yearning to have him wrap his arms around her even in her sleep, and he was up in that dark, dusty room, thinking about his lost son.

It was strange to think that she hadn’t even considered the possibility that this man had living descendants. He had probably had a wife, too. What was she like, Belle wondered. Were they very much in love? How could she possibly have moved on after he’d died? If Rumple remembered her again - _when_ he remembered her again, would he still be in love with her? Maybe that’s why he’d kept his distance. Maybe he felt his love for her even if he couldn’t remember.

So Belle woke up with a dull ache in her chest, the cause of which was twofold; the cold realization that in all likelihood her feelings were one-sided, and the painful awareness of these little selfish thoughts hiding just out of view, whispering things she’d rather not hear, making it difficult for her to like herself very much at all. And there was something else that was too unpleasant to put into words. Something that practically every bad movie or show about ghosts had told her would happen if whatever was keeping a lost soul lost got resolved somehow. Something that was, objectively, a good thing, but made her sad.

Belle hated feeling selfish. That was why she had to drag Rumple out of this building, into her car and across town to go see his grandson, and find some way to get his son’s life story out of him. Maybe his, too. She’d actually come up with a semi-decent plan halfway through her first cup of coffee. Something about collecting information on historical immigration for the town library. She ought to be able to make that work; Belle knew there actually had been projects like that before. Everything should work out just fine, as long as this Sam Gold didn’t go asking around for the results of her “research” at town hall, after.

She felt him before she heard the knock.

“Hey!” she said, probably trying a little too hard to sound cheerful and positive with those strange unpleasant thoughts like thunderclouds in her head.

“Good morning,” came his reply. Belle spun around on her desk chair and saw him take form by her door. “Did you manage to get some sleep?” he asked.

“Yeah, a bit.”

“You don’t look like it.”

“Thanks, you charmer.”

He cracked a little smile, and it didn’t look entirely sad. Belle decided to take that as a good sign. She stood up, walked a little closer, returned his faint smile.

“Have you decided if you want to go and see Sam?”

“Yes,” he said, pausing to sigh. “I want to see him.”

So they were doing this. Belle forced a smile, then poured the last of her coffee straight down the hatch, almost burning herself in the process.

“I think I could get him to talk about Neal. And you.”

“How on earth would you do that?”

“Well, at first I thought we’d only go and look. That I’d pose as a customer, look at a few things and then leave. But if I pretend to be working on some sort of demographics research for the library, or whatever, I could ask him about his parents. And you.”

Rumple crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a strange look that made her doubt herself. Made her think that either there was a terrible flaw in her plan, or Rumple didn’t actually care to find out about his past at all.

“That could get you in trouble,” he said softly, shaking his head. “If you claim to be doing this as an employee of the town and they find out about it, you could lose your job.”

“That won’t happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Just trust me, Rumple. I could do this for you. We could walk in together, and if I ask him the right questions, maybe he could tell us you and your son’s story. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Ah, that was the question, really. Was this what he wanted? Belle inched a little closer still, hoping to be able to read the minute expressions on his face, the little twitches and creases, just in case he didn’t give her a proper answer in words.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I want to know about my son. I want to know if he was happy.”

“But you don’t want to know your own story?”

“You might not like what you hear.”

“This isn’t about me, Rumple. I don’t care. I’m curious, sure, but I don’t think there’s anything your grandson could tell me that would make me…” _Careful, there. Keep that to yourself._ “… feel any different about you.”

He tore his gaze away, sighed another deep sigh. This was like pulling teeth, and somehow she was the one pulling them _and_ the poor wretch with the aching teeth at the same time. Belle was scared to lose him. She was terrified that he would vanish into thin air - forever this time - if they put the pieces of his puzzle together. And that was exactly why she had to do this. She couldn’t withhold a man’s peace and resolution just because the thought of being without him made her feel strangely homesick.

It was awful. And she had to do it.

“I asked you if I could help you remember. Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“You told me I could help.”

“I did.”

“Do you still feel the same way?”

He slid his fingers in his hair, sliding through, combing it back and letting it fall back to its proper place. God, she wished he would make his mind up already. Anything. Just anything that would set something in motion. Anything to stop her from wanting to keep him all to herself.

“You’d better call ahead, then. Ask him if he’s got time to answer a few questions.”

“So… We’re doing this?”

“Yes.”

“And I can ask him-” Damn that tight feeling in her throat. “I can ask him anything?”

He nodded. Her stomach flipped. But this was good. This was a good thing. This was the right thing to do, and everything would be alright. He wouldn’t disappear. Why did she even think he would? Because of ghost story clichés? He didn’t float about the building scaring the hell out of people, rattling a ball and chain and whispering ‘boo’ in anyone’s ear, so why was she even considering this?

It didn’t matter, anyway. It was the right thing to do.

It was a good idea, making that call, and it was a relief to hear this man’s voice and really, truly know that he existed. He said she could drop by any time today, and he’d make time to answer her questions. All the time she was on the phone, she felt Rumple’s eyes on her, and when she glanced over, he looked heartbreakingly nervous, chewing his lip, quickly looking away.

It felt strange being in broad daylight and feeling his presence so near. She almost opened the passenger door for him, too, which was ridiculous. Maybe she’d tell him about it later and he could give her another taste of his gentle mockery, and she could tease him back, and everything would be normal again. Everything would be the same.

“Do you have to be solid?” she asked, slamming the car door shut and settling into her seat.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if I drive off and you’re not solid, will the car just move straight through you?”

“That’s an interesting thought,” he muttered. “I’m not sure.”

“Oh. So, we’ll just give it a try, then?”

“Sure.”

But there was no problem, really. He couldn’t stay visible, of course, but he spoke softly to her to make up for that, so that she wouldn’t think she’d accidentally left him somewhere, or that he’d jumped out at the theater in time to catch a movie. He talked to her about her story, told her of the drawings he’d made (one of which she’d seen up in the attic when she came looking for him) and told her about the look of complete and utter joy on his son’s face when he got that little model car out of his pocket and let his little hands grab it. He’d fallen silent before they reached the jewelry shop, but Belle knew he was still there.

…

A little bell rang as she pushed the shop door open and she was suddenly filled to the brim with nerves and excitement, but the background hum of his familiar energy near her was never drowned out. He was still here. She was still keeping him anchored.

There was movement in the back of the shop, and she saw a figure approach from the other room. He was backlit by the morning sun coming from the windows in that room, so she could only really see his face when he’d made it into the front of the shop and positioned himself behind the counter.

He was an older man with thick, graying hair cut fairly short. He wasn’t very tall, but he had a presence about him. When he smiled, it reminded Belle of someone. Just a little bit. The lines in his face were the same. She smiled back, and she smiled big, because _they smiled the same._

“Hi! Mr. Gold?”

“Call me Sam,” he said, reaching over the counter to hold out his hand. “And you are…”

“Belle French,” she replied, taking his offered hand and shaking it. “We spoke on the phone.”

“Ah, of course,” said Sam, laughing. “I should have figured, what with the accent. Can’t be that many Australians running around these parts.”

“Just two that I know of, and one of them’s my dad.”

“And I bet he would have sounded a little different over the phone, right?”

“Right,” she giggled.

His eyes were blue, and a different shape from Rumple’s, too. There was still a bit of brown in his hair, but overall, he looked older than Rumple. Not by much, but still. Enough to notice the difference. That was his grandson, and he looked older than him. God, this was weird. But the fact that they smiled in exactly the same way was heartwarming. She wondered if Rumple had noticed that. Probably not, though. The man hadn’t looked in a mirror for years.

“I suppose we better sit down for this, right? We can sit in the back room and talk there. Would you do me a favor and flip the sign for me?”

“Sure!”

“Thanks!”

This was good. She had a positive feeling about this guy. He was so warm and friendly, and her nerves settled down a bit, allowing her smiles to come easier and her laughter to sound less forced. She followed him into the back room. It seemed to be half office space and half living room; a desk and a bunch of filing cabinets pushed up against one wall, and a sofa and some chairs with a little kitchen area on the other side of the room

“Please, have a seat. Make yourself at home. Would you like something to drink? Tea? Water? Coffee?”

“Oh. Coffee would be great, if it’s no bother.”

“Coffee it is. Just made some. Milk?”

“Yeah. And sugar. Thanks.”

She sat down on one end of the sofa and tried to sense where Rumple was at. She couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, but she knew he was near. In the same room. Probably staring at his grandson, because that’s what Belle would be doing, had their roles been reversed. His _grandson_ , dear God. She wished she could see him right now, read his face and make sure he was doing okay.

“There you go,” he said, handing her a big mug filled to the brim with coffee, and Belle found herself having to stifle a chuckle as she thanked him. That was more coffee than anyone should ever drink in one sitting. (And she considered it a challenge.)

“So. Do you mind if I call you Belle?”

“Not at all!”

“Belle. Tell me about this project of yours.”

Oh. Right. That massive lie. Belle hoped what people had told her about her being a terrible liar was all a bit of an exaggeration, took a deep breath and said, “Oh, it’s for the town archives. More of a preliminary thing, putting some feelers out if there’s enough of an interest and enough material and information to put together a little project to study historical overseas immigration to this town.”

She was rather proud of herself for that ‘preliminary’ thing. That way, should he ever make contact to ask about the project, she could just tell him the town decided not to pursue it any further, and that would be that. If she knew exactly where Rumple was right then, she’d have flashed a sneaky quick grin in his direction.

“Definitely sounds interesting. What kind of information were you looking for?”

“Ah, well, the town does keep some immigration records, and from those I gathered you have Scottish ancestors. Am I correct?”

“Sure do.”

“Could I ask you some questions about that? Just to get an idea of what life was like for a Scottish immigrant around that time.”

“Sure, but uh, don’t you have a little recorder, or something? Or a notebook?”

Oh. Oh God. She didn’t bring a pen _or_ paper. She couldn’t see him, but she would bet her life Rumple had his palm to his forehead right now, shaking his head.

“The, uh, the town doesn’t have the, uh, budget for that,” Belle stammered. She paused to gather her wits, steady her breathing and then added, “And I forgot my notebook. Could I maybe borrow a pen and some paper?”

Idiot. She’d rushed in head-long, guns blazing, banners blowing in the wind, brain at home where she left it on her pillow this morning. But the man was kind enough to smile, nod and tell her sure, that wouldn’t be a problem at all. So he gave her some lined paper, a nice looking pen and pulled up a chair.

“Shoot,” he said, leaning back in his chair with that distractingly familiar smile.

“Your father, he was Scottish, right?”

“Yeah. Neal Gold. Came over when he was about 14 or 15, I think.”

That picture flashed in front of her eyes. Neal standing tall and proud in front of the railing of what she now knew pretty much for sure was a boat, the open sea behind him. Belle scribbled down his age, just to scribble down something and look productive and professional.

“Can you tell me a little bit more about him? Just, what kind of man he was. What he did for a living. Those things.”

“He was just a good, kind, loving guy. Plenty of friends. Someone the entire neighborhood could rely on if they needed a hand around the house, or a ride when their car broke down. You know, that sort of thing. Did some factory work for a few years, a short stint in the army, and then eventually he got into the jewelry business and passed that down to me. Liked to fish. Sail, too. He taught me how to do both.”

Belle smiled. That sounded good, didn’t it? That must have been exactly what Rumple was hoping for. He wanted to know if his son had lived a happy life, and from what she - _they_ were hearing, it sounded like he had.

“Am I right in thinking he didn’t have you until he was a bit older?”

“He was 42, actually, when I was born. I never thought of him as old, though. Other kids had younger parents, but I didn’t notice a difference. He had this vibrant energy about him, you know. Sensible, always kept his cool, but you could tell it was a good thing he’d waited so long to have a kid. You could tell he needed to think long and hard before settling down, and he did.”

And Belle was immensely grateful for that. If Neal had had his son at a much younger age, then there would have been a bigger chance of him having passed away. Thank God she didn’t have to tell Rumple he’d missed out on his grandson’s entire life from birth to death, too.

“Can I ask you how he met your mother?”

If that was too irrelevant a question (which it definitely was for the pretext she’d given him) Sam didn’t seem to notice or care, but still she added, “The town’s really interested in the personal details of the matter. You know, sketching a portrait. Human interest.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, nodding. “But I can’t help you much, there. They never really did tell me that story properly. They met way before they got married and had me, and apparently, those were some wild years, cause I never got to hear any stories from that time.”

“I… don’t know what to imagine, to be honest.”

“Bonnie and Clyde light, maybe.”

“Oh God! Really?” she giggled.

“Nah, I’m exaggerating. But they weren’t just some boring old couple, I’ll tell you that much. Had to be real creative to get away with the usual teenage hijinks in that house. They knew every trick in the book. Probably wrote the book, too.”

Oh, this was great. Belle was getting so much out of him, and everything he said just made it sound as if Neal had lived a long and happy life with people he loved. The way he said it, too, was heartwarming. He had a great big smile on his face, and there was nothing but love in his voice.

That’s why she didn’t really want to broach the subject. But she pushed on.

“What do you know about your grandfather? Neal’s father, I mean?”

“Interesting guy, to say the least,” he said with a deep sigh. “Never met him.”

_You kinda have, though._

But this was it. She only had to ask, and they would finally know his name. He was still there with her, and he would finally hear his name spoken after God knows how many years. Belle swallowed, cleared her throat, gathered her courage and asked, “And what was his name?”

“You already know!” said Sam.

What? Uh oh. Did he just sniff her out?

“Oh, uh, no. That was missing from the records,” she rushed to explain.

“That’s not what I mean,” he laughed good-naturedly, shifting to sit with his elbows on his knees, offering her a kind smile. “I was named after him.”

“S-sam? His name is Sam?”

“Well, it was Samuel. I don’t know if anyone ever called him Sam.”

Samuel. Samuel. He didn’t look like a Samuel. He looked like a Rumple. Belle knew that was ridiculous, but it was true. She’d just have to get used to it, but… she’d miss it. That name. Her Rumple. Where was he? She should have asked him to try and stay right next to her before they left the car. She wished she knew for sure that he was sitting close.

“If Neal named you after his father,” Belle said, “that must mean he was very important to him.”

“Oh, he was, even though they weren’t on the best terms when he died. That’s the thing my dad always told me he regretted most. That he never had the chance to tell him that in the end, their differences didn’t matter. That he still loved him.”

There was a heavy weight in her stomach, steadily growing heavier, weighing her down, wiping the smile from her face. This was… good and bad. This could get worse. The sun had moved up and away from the windows, and the room felt a little colder, too. She heard the clock on the wall. The sound of time ticking away was not a very welcome one to her right now. Her strong, overwhelming urge to touch Rumple, to hold his hand, wasn’t selfish this time. Well, it was in the sense that she wanted more than anything to comfort him. But that was it. No childish need to wrap herself around him and claim him as her own. Just the heartbreaking, impossible desire to comfort him with touch. This was already excruciating, and they weren’t even done digging.

“Why didn’t they get along?” Belle asked.

“Well, I’ve only got my dad’s side of the story, here, but from what I understand, Samuel had made it seem like at some point, the two of them would head back home again, but that never happened, and my dad started to resent him for that.”

He fell silent to drink his own coffee, and it reminded Belle not to let hers get any colder.

“He had some issues confronting things head-on. Never really lied, exactly, but never really told the truth, either. My dad always said his father ran from his problems like he didn’t have a limp.”

“He had a limp?”

Huh. She’d never noticed. But then again, with no physical body in the traditional sense (God, that was a weird collection of words she never thought she’d have to come up with) it was probably logical for his limp to disappear. Would it come back now?

“Yeah, and it was pretty bad, too. Self-inflicted injury. When the First World War broke out, he signed up voluntarily, like many young men did back then. But soon after, he got the news that his wife, my grandmother, was pregnant. And he wanted out, of course.”

That was way, way too much information for her to process in one go, and with a little start, Belle realized she hadn’t been writing any of this down. She made some quick notes, but her head was reeling and she hoped to God that this wasn’t all too much for Rumple, if it was this bad for her. The First World War? He was old enough to have fought in the… Oh, God. She knew he was old. He _must_ have been old to have a grandson, and Belle supposed she should have been able to just about guess his age when she saw Neal’s date of birth, but she hadn’t really given it that much thought, and -

1914\. Oh.

“That was Neal?”

He nodded. Belle didn’t know what to focus on. His wife? His relationship with Neal? She decided to let Sam do the talking and see where he was heading with his story. He seemed to be enjoying himself a little bit. Seemed like he’d be a great campfire story teller. But goodness, she’d like to get all of this over with, too. They were steadily heading towards something that could only be sad and painful, and Sam was taking his sweet time getting there. The massive mug of coffee wasn’t helping her nerves, either.

“I think he couldn’t bear the thought of my dad having to grow up fatherless,” said Sam in between great big gulps of coffee.

“He hurt himself so he could go back home?”

“Yup. Managed to break his ankle somehow, and break it _good_. Smashed to smithereens. This was back when everyone was still pretty enthusiastic about signing up, so he got away with it, too.”

“What do you mean? Like, they weren’t suspicious?”

“Yeah, not like they were after they had to start drafting people two years later. And he’d set the scene and everything. Clever guy.”

“So he wasn’t punished for that?”

“Not by a military tribunal,” Sam muttered with a bitter laugh. “His wife knew. Blabbed about it in the town pub in her drunken stupor, couldn’t stand the shame and left him and their son after a few years. She had her own issues, her own awful past, and the two of them probably never should have gotten married. Two broken people with a kid tying them together, you know? Not a good idea. She took a lot of things out on him. That’s what my dad told me, anyway.”

“So R-… Samuel took care of Neal on his own? Or did he remarry?”

“Nope, never remarried. He took care of him all on his own, and they did alright, from what my dad told me. He worked long hours, but he earned well, so he could take some time off every once in a while and spend time with him. Things were pretty good for them back in Scotland.”

Belle’s heart ached for him. Was he remembering all of this? Did it hurt? It was a silly thing to do, but she splayed her hand on the sofa and inched it to where she hoped Rumple was sitting, hoping that he would notice, make himself touchable and let her know he was okay. Somehow. By touch. But there was nothing there, and Belle had to make do with just that feeling that he was there in the room, at least. That they were still connected.

“What did he do for a living?”

“Not sure, exactly. Worked with textile machines, I think. Bit of an engineering genius from what I gathered.”

“Do you know why they moved here if everything was going so well?”

Sam made a pensive humming sound, let his eyes travel across the room as if he were looking for an answer written on the wall, then shrugged and said, “If I have to guess, I’d say he wanted to give his boy the chance to start with a clean slate. Cause everyone knew, you know? My dad was the boy with the coward for a father. He said he never cared about that, but who knows. Maybe his father picked up on it before he did.”

“That makes sense,” Belle said softly. And when she said it, it wasn’t to keep the conversation going. It was to tell Rumple that nothing she had heard so far had made her think any less of him. She hoped he understood.

“So they settled down right here, and Samuel got a job in the old cannery on the other side of town. My dad did, too, eventually.”

“The cannery… the one that’s been converted to flats?”

“You know it?”

“Y-yeah, I’ve seen it.”

_’Perhaps I worked here.’_

“Well, one day, when I was old enough, my dad sat me down and said he was going to tell me why they named me after his father. Cause in that cannery, Samuel saved my dad’s life.”

“W-wait, what?”

Sam gave her a slightly confused look, and Belle was quick to fold her face back into a neutral expression, even though it almost physically hurt to do so. “I mean, that sounds like an interesting story,” she blurted. And those words almost burned her throat, they were so painfully trite.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Well, interesting and tragic, really. I don’t know if it’s relevant or not, but would you like to hear it?”

“Yes!” she almost cried out. “Yes, I’d like to hear it. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “It happened soon after the United States finally declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy. 1941, 1942, thereabouts.”

“Right.”

“Samuel was too old and he wouldn’t have passed the medical exam with his ankle, anyway, but the man was scared to death that his son was about to be drafted.”

“And was he?”

“No. Because Samuel, like I said, was a clever guy, and he had a way with words, knew just which buttons to push with people, and well… The gist of it is, he went behind my dad’s back and convinced the boss to have his draft deferred on the grounds of essential civilian employment. They needed a ton of canned foods for troops overseas, so it was really his best shot. He even wrote the letter himself to make absolutely sure it would work.”

“So Neal was never drafted?”

“Nope, and he was absolutely furious about it, too. My dad said that at the time, he was passionate about what was happening over there, and in his eyes, his father ripped away his chance to help. To do his part, you know?”

“But that saved his life, right?”

“No. Well, maybe. Who knows what would have happened had Samuel let him go. But that’s not how he saved his life.”

That weight in the pit of her stomach was swelling, growing ever heavier, sinking ever deeper, pushing up some unpleasant, anxious feeling she had to work hard to keep under control.

“It wasn’t exactly a secret around town, what he did. And back then, well, people didn’t have much sympathy for what they considered draft dodgers. No-one really had a problem with my father, cause everyone knew him to be a good kid who liked to help out where he could, so it didn’t take very long for word to spread that Samuel had made the entire thing happen.”

Belle could only nod, now. She couldn’t risk opening her mouth and hearing a whimper come out, or a plea for Rumple to just touch her already and let her know he was alright.

“And it just so happened that one man who lived in the same neighborhood had had all three of his sons shipped off. Now, he’d already lost one son, but then he got the news that another one, who worked at the cannery, had been killed, too, and he just… lost it. The day after he found out, he showed up at the cannery, yelling and screaming and crying. Broken. Complete mess. He was ranting and raving about how Samuel had killed his son, that his son was more skilled, more valuable than my dad, accusing Samuel of… well, basically, of the truth.”

Sam paused, sat back in his chair and sighed deep. Belle felt her heart beat faster, faster, felt her stomach clench in anticipation. Pure dread, rising up in her throat, making her swallow damn near every sentence Sam spoke.

“He pulled out a gun, pointed it at my father, yelled something about showing Samuel how it feels to lose a son, and when it went off, my grandfather had thrown himself in front of the bullet.”

 _No. No. Not like that._ Suddenly, Belle felt Rumple’s hand on top of hers in her lap, and she wanted desperately to turn her hand over and grab his tight, but she couldn’t. She was so incredibly grateful that she could feel him, now, but it didn’t make it easier to hold back her tears, like she’d thought it would. With every word Sam spoke, the tightness in her chest grew more obstructive, and she could breathe only the shallowest of breaths.

“Hit him right in the heart. Killed him in an instant. The other guy was shaken. Couldn’t move. They just… walked him out of the building. He didn’t put up a fight.”

Rumple…

Was his hand trembling, or was hers? There were tears in her eyes, but maybe if she didn’t blink, maybe if she tried really hard, they would stay there. She wouldn’t cry. Maybe.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his brow furrowed in concern.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I’m alright, Sam. Sorry, it’s just…” She had to pause, swallow down another lump in her throat, gather her strength. “That’s a sad story.”

His touch was gone.

“Sure is. Awful for everyone involved, really. That guy… he’d lost two sons. Two healthy, strong boys, just gone. And Samuel… well,” he sighed. “Look, my dad wasn’t some impulsive idiot barely out of his teens when he wanted to sign up. He was about 28, then. Old enough to make his own informed choices, you know? So I get why he was pissed. But I think Samuel couldn’t bear the thought of losing the one thing he loved and cared for more than anything. He saw his chance to keep his son close and safe, and he took it.”

“And yeah, that little draft dodging trick he pulled in my dad’s name was selfish and controlling, even though he did it out of love. People _are_ selfish. So is love, really, when you think about it. Maybe my grandfather was a bit more selfish than most, but he was a good father when it came down to it.” Sam shook his head sadly, and added, “He proved that when he took a bullet for his son.”

Why had he stopped touching her?

“But you said Neal was in the army?” Belle asked, swallowing down the overwhelming desire to cry. Her voice sounded frail in her own ears and she hoped Sam wouldn’t notice.

“Not right after his father died, though. When they started drafting more people the next year, they reconsidered the requirements for essential civil employment draft deferment, and he ended up drafted, anyway. And by then, he realized that he could respect his father’s sacrifice by living his own life the way he wanted to. So off he went.”

“But he made it back okay,” Belle said softly, feeling herself smile.

“Made it back in one piece to resume wooing the hell out of my mother, yes,” he laughed.

Belle’s smile grew wider, but she needed to go. _They_ needed to go. She could still feel him, but not as strongly as she did before. If he was losing focus, she needed to talk to him, be his anchor point. But there was still… There was still something else.

“One last question. Their resting places… Were they buried, or…”

“Yeah, in the cemetery on the edge of town.”

“Ru-.. Samuel’s, too?”

“Yeah, just in the older part. Right in the back, near the edge of the woods.”

“Oh, alright. Thank you. You’ve been such a help, Sam. I should be heading back, but really, you-”

She was interrupted by the sound of tiny feet stomping down the staircase behind her.

“Grampa!” cried a little voice. Belle turned her head and saw the most adorable little boy, looked about three or four, blond mop top, sleepy brown eyes.

“Hey, kiddo! How was your nap? Feel better?” asked Sam, whose eyes and smile had grown big as could be. The little boy nodded, then glanced at Belle with a little bit of suspicion. Sam laughed, went over to him and scooped him up in his arms. Belle stood up, too.

“Come meet the nice lady,” Sam said.

“Hi,” came his small, sleepy voice.

“Hi! I’m Belle!” she replied.

“Ed’s a little shy. Aren’t you, buddy?”

“Ed? That’s a great name! I like your Superman pajamas!”

Ed gave her a little shy smile. Cute as a button.

“He’s had to stay home from kindergarten cause he’s got an awful cold, haven’t you, bud? But his mom and dad couldn’t take another day off work, and my wife’s off on a spa retreat with her girlfriends so grampa’s got himself an assistant in the shop, today.”

“So you have children!”

And grandchildren. Which meant that Rumple not only had a grandson, he had at least one great grandchild and a great great grandson, and for some reason, it made Belle want to burst out laughing.

“Four of ‘em. All of ‘em flew the nest years ago, thank God. If you’ve got an e-mail address, I could send you a family tree, if that’s any use to you at all. It’s pretty recent.”

“Yes! That would be really good.”

“Send you some pictures my father kept, too.”

“Perfect!”

She scribbled down her e-mail address (but made sure to use her personal one and not her work e-mail, hoping he wouldn’t notice) and pressed the piece of paper in his hand.

“Thank you, Sam.”

“I just hope I was of some use.”

“You were. You were an incredible help, and I can’t thank you enough.”

But she had to go, and she had to go now, because she couldn’t sense Rumple anymore. He wasn’t in the front of the shop, either. Her heart was beating loudly in her chest and the hair on her arms was standing on end, and the only thing she could think to do was jump into in her car and pray he was there.

The moment she slammed the car door shut, she felt him, and her heart slowed. “Oh, God. Rumple, you’re here,” she sighed in relief, slumping in her seat, looking toward the passenger side knowing fully well she wasn’t going to see him there.

“I’m sorry. I had to get out.”

Since she couldn’t see him, she had to hang on to his every word to gauge his mood, really listen to how he said it; the tone of his voice, whether it was shaking or dark and monotone, rushed or barely making it out of his mouth, but she couldn’t figure it out. She didn’t know how he felt, and it was making Belle nervous.

“Do you remember?” she heard herself ask.

“Dying? No. The gun, yes. That man. The fear in my boy’s eyes.”

What was she supposed to do now? Tell him she was sorry? Offer her condolences… for his own death? Cause really, what she wanted to do was cry. Sit there at the wheel and cry her heart out for this man, but what good would that do for him? She was his friend. He needed her. She just didn’t know what he needed her to _do_.

“Rumple, I don’t know what to say. I want to ask if you’re alright, but I know you can’t be. I wanna say I’m sorry, but-”

“You better drive, Belle,” he muttered. “Someone might see you talking to no-one.”

The way he’d said that bothered her for some reason, but he was right. They needed to talk, but not here in front of his grandson’s shop. Home, maybe? Just somewhere she could see him, where she wouldn’t have to rely on just his voice to know what she could do to help him. _If_ she could help him.

“Will you take me to see his grave?”

Oh.

“Of course,” she said, turning away to quickly wipe a disobedient tear from her eye. He didn’t have to see that. He wasn’t crying, so neither should she. “Anything. Just ask.”

…

There were clouds gathering overhead as they walked into the cemetery. There was no-one there but them and the occasional cawing bird. The chilly autumn wind was making the very tips of her ears tingle, so she pulled up her peacoat’s collar and cursed herself for wearing her hair up that day.

Belle walked slowly through the rows of graves, reading each and every one, stopping to pick a daisy growing in the grass every once in a while. She’d asked him to stay nearby, not to split up. She didn’t want him to be alone when he read his son’s name on a gravestone.

“Can I ask you something? It’s okay if you don’t want to talk.”

“Ask away.”

“When Sam said all of those things, did you remember them? Like, each little thing separately? As he said it?”

Another little patch of daisies. Belle stopped to pick a few more and let the rest of them be. Someone else might want to pick a few.

“At first, yes. Then all at once.”

“When was that?”

“When he said I… When he said why he was named after me.”

“When he said you saved your son’s life?”

He hummed an affirmative noise in his throat. He was being humble. Self-effacing. About jumping in front of a bullet and taking it for his son.

“Would it be weird if I said I was proud of you?” Belle asked. There came no reply for a few seconds, so she stopped walking, to make sure she he hadn’t gone off to find Neal’s grave on his own. But soon enough she heard him ask, “Would you have let it stop you if you knew it was?”

“No,” she replied, smiling to herself.

“Then let’s just keep looking.”

It took them a little while, but there it was, in all its finality, written in stone.

 

 

Neal Gold  
Beloved father and grandfather  
1914-2003

“Rumple,” she called softly.

“I know.”

Belle held her handful of daisies out to where she’d last heard his voice, trusting him to know what she was suggesting. And sure enough, up floated a few of her daisies, and down they went to settle gently in front of his headstone. He hadn’t taken all of them. Belle put hers right next to his. There was a soft noise in the air. Maybe it was the wind. Maybe it was his breath catching. It didn’t matter. All she could do was be here with him.

“He almost lost his life because I was too much of a coward to let him live it. My boy did great without me.”

Belle wanted to tell him Neal loved him, he _obviously_ loved him. That he may not have been there for him physically, but that he must have been in his thoughts every single day for him to name his only son after him. That he must have been in awe at his sacrifice. Must have craved his guidance when he finally became a father himself and he wasn’t there to see it. Wasn’t there to tell him how to change a diaper, how to make sure the milk wasn’t too warm, how to bandage up scraped knees and soothe a fever. But the silence felt too important to break it. If anyone should break it, it should be Rumple. It was his silence to do with as he pleased.

And he kept it in one piece for a while as the wind blew the tree’s branches swaying and the dark clouds ever on in their grim parade, until suddenly there came the thing that until then, Belle didn’t know she never wanted to hear. A softly uttered suggestion, gently delivered but utterly determined, “We should find mine.”

No. She didn’t want to. It didn’t feel like the right thing to do. It felt wrong, and it made her stomach almost ache, but she didn’t know why. Of course he would want to see his own grave. Of course. That was okay. That wasn’t wrong. But then why did she feel like it was the worst possible thing they could do?

“Y-yeah. If you’re sure,” she managed.

“I’m sure.”

The older part of the cemetery was up ahead, past some pine trees, a little bit downhill. There weren’t many graves there. Belle knew the town had the oldest ones demolished if there were no surviving family members to stop the process. They should be able to find his pretty quick, and she dreaded it. Every step she took was torture. Every breath completely forced. What the hell was wrong with her? Why did every single cell in her brain tell her to turn around? Why was she so scared?

“Belle.”

She only realized he’d left her side because his voice came from somewhere else. To her left, near a weathered headstone she didn’t want to approach for all the money in this entire world.

“Come on, love.”

She barely heard it over the sound of blood rushing, her heart pumping, the wet sounds of her constant swallowing, her lungs pushing and pulling out air but not really _breathing_ , but she came closer. She had to be there. She had to be there with him, even though…

 

 

Samuel Gold  
Beloved father  
1889-1942

It hit her like a lightning bolt strikes an ancient tree and splits it in two.

Whatever it was, her small, shivering body was filled with it. It was fear, death, endless inevitable misery like a thick smoke filling up her lungs and drowning her as she stood there. She wasn’t crying - not really - but tears streamed down her face. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong and she couldn’t breathe, like a huge, freezing cold hand had risen up from the ground to grab her, gripping tight, squeezing her body, pushing in her rib cage.

He was dead. He was dead.

His bones were down there, at her feet. He had had a body, and it had simply stopped functioning, and they had put it in the ground and covered it with soil, and he had rotted away. It was real. It had happened. The man she was falling for… Her friend was dead and buried because someone had put a bullet through his heart, and no matter how many breaths she took, how fast her lungs pumped in and out, in and out, she felt like she was suffocating.

A touch at her shoulder made her jump and almost scream, but then she heard a familiar voice gently shushing her, calling her name softly, and when the touch at her shoulder came back, Belle didn’t flinch again.

“You’re having a panic attack, Belle. It’s alright. You’ll be fine. Just breathe in deep and look at that tree over there. See that tree? Breathe out for me. See that one dried bare branch, and the bird? Breathe in deep, sweetheart. Hold it in for a while. Look at that bird. That’s a raven, I think. They’re always bigger than you picture them. Breathe out. Let it all out, every drop of air. There, just like that. That’s a good girl.”

He helped her breathe out the black fog until her lungs made sense to her again and her heartbeat slowed. He cooed and coaxed until the fear slinked away with its tail between its legs, leaving her sniffling, wide-eyed, baffled, but calm.

Then came the raindrops.

His hand on her shoulder guided her out of the cemetery and to where she’d parked the car. It was raining properly, now, but she didn’t care enough to really hurry up and get inside. By the time she’d settled in the driver’s seat, her hair was wet and her hands were cold.

“You had to see it. I’m sorry.”

She could only nod. The rain was pouring down, noisy in this little car of hers. The world beyond the windows was blurred and distant. She wished the heating worked in this old thing. At the same time, she didn’t care.

“I see why you left, now,” Belle said.

“What do you mean?”

“You knew I didn’t get it. Not like… Not like this. You saw this coming. What I don’t know is why you came back.”

He was dead. He’d been alive, and then he’d died. She knew, now. Really, really knew. She caught sight of something in the corner of her eye. He was making himself visible for her. Just a little bit. Just enough for her to see his gentle, concerned eyes. She was immensely grateful for that. She’d gone too long without them.

“All day long,” she said with a shaky sigh, “I was scared that you’d be gone by the end of the day. At peace, or whatever it is that always happens in ghost stories.”

“I’m still here.”

“You are. And I feel like the worst friend in the world, because I’m glad. I don’t even know how this works - how _you_ work - but some part of me was convinced that this could have been your chance to move on, and I knew that would have been a good thing for you, but… I hated it. I hated it so much. And I hate that I feel that way.”

Belle had to stop for a moment. She couldn’t look at him, and she could feel the tears well up again. She took a deep breath and continued, “So all of that’s why you had to stop me from passing out just then. I’m sorry. And thank you.”

“Don’t apologize. And Belle, look at me,” he said, and her eyes drifted to his at once. “I don’t know how this works, either. I don’t know what should have happened to me when I died, but I don’t want to trade in what I have here for the unknown.”

Belle blinked at him. She wasn’t sure why, but what he’d just said made the tiny thing in her belly spread its wings and flutter.

“Not anymore,” he murmured, a small, half smile sending that little winged thing aflutter once more. “I don’t really know why, but…”

“I think I might.”

She’d said it before she knew she was thinking it. The words came flying out of her mouth in a breathy whisper. She didn’t think she’d meant to say it out loud at all. He held her gaze, his brow furrowing slow. She wanted to cry. She wanted to kiss him.

Three loud taps on the window made her jump up in her seat. Rumple’s eyes were wide in surprise and then gone in a flash.

“Jesus Christ,” she hissed, wiping the last remaining tears from her eyes with one hand and cranking the window open with the other. A concerned looking woman in uniform gave her a slightly suspicious look.

“Are you alright in there, Ma’am?” the woman asked, raising her voice against the drumming sound of the rain on the car roof.

“Yeah! I’m alright, officer!” Belle chirped, putting on the biggest grin she could manage given the circumstances.

“Might wanna get yourself home. Storm’s coming.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“You’re sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah. Had a big day.”

“Alright then. Have a nice day, Ma’am.”

“You too, officer. Thank you, officer.”

Belle cranked the window shut once the woman had turned away and started the car, just in case she was waiting for her to keep to her word and head on home.

“Nice reflexes,” she muttered.

“Nice cooperative attitude. _Officer,_ ” he replied

It felt good to laugh. She wanted to laugh for about a century. Yeah, that sounded about right. A century of laughing with the invisible man in her car to make up for all of those other intense feelings that had been throwing her about like a broken umbrella in a hurricane all day long.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

“Are you okay to drive?”

“Why? Are _you_ going to drive? Shall I wave at the nice police officer from the passenger seat as the invisible driver overtakes her?”

“Alright, alright,” he growled, laughter in his voice. “Just drive, then.”

…

They went their separate ways once they got back to the apartment building. Rumple up to his attic to let it all sink in, and Belle to her disappointingly empty fridge to find something to eat. She hadn’t had breakfast, which was a stupid thing to do, because now she felt like she was about to pass out all over again. (Less panicky this time. Just hungry.) She had to settle for cornflakes, and after that, she just lay on her sofa and stared up at the ceiling trying to figure out what the hell her life had turned into. When _that_ got a little tired, she watched the news on TV, read a few pages in a book, wrote a few sentences for her manuscript, and then, when the sun had set and the rain had settled for a less terrifying but still steady drip, there came a knock on the door that instantly made every trace of boredom disappear.

Rumple had come back, and he’d asked her politely whether this was a bad time, and he’d made her laugh, because no. No, it was perfect, and she was so happy he’d come. He didn’t really want to talk about it, he’d said. He was alright, and he was grateful, but right now, he just wanted to spend time with a friend. There was nothing on TV, so they gravitated towards Scrabble again. They played for hours and swayed from soft, thoughtful conversation to playful teasing and back again, letting the mood shift shapes between them as it saw fit.

“What do you do when you go back up to the attic every evening?” Belle asked, feeling a curious little idea begin to form in the back of her head.

Rumple placed his tiles on the board and shrugged in response.

“I read, mostly. Sit and think. Recently I’ve been drawing, too.”

 _I know,_ was what she wanted to say. _I know, because I saw that drawing, and it’s gorgeous._

“How do you rest?”

“Oh. You mean, do I sleep?”

“Yeah. Not like… you know, not like when you went away, but…”

“No, I understand. I don’t have to sleep, but I suppose I can. It’s not really the same, but it allows me to unwind.”

“Oh.”

Yes. Oh. She was gearing up to ask him something she wasn’t sure was a very good idea. But she was tired, and she’d missed him even though they’d spent most of the day together. That, and there had been something small and fragile and precious in that car, hadn’t there? Before the long arm of the law came knocking on the window. Some strange golden thread pulled taut between their chests, and it vibrated and sang like the wind was playing it as an instrument, with the sound of the rain for percussion. It had snapped, but they could tie it back together, couldn’t they? If they were really careful.

“Could you maybe stay?” Belle blurted, feeling that weird thing in her belly buzz. He looked up from the piece of paper they used to keep score and looked a little puzzled.

“Stay?”

“Yeah,” she said. She had to be brave, now. There was no going back. “Stay here with me tonight. You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to, but maybe you could stay and read here? I have a ton of books. You don’t have to worry about the light keeping me up; I’m a pretty deep sleeper.”

He hadn’t expected that, that much was clear. He blinked at her, his mouth slightly open, as if he figured he would have been able to respond by now. Belle, wanting to give him an out in case he was too polite (or too shocked?) to just say no, added, “Unless you want to be alone right now.”

“I really don’t,” he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

“You’ll stay?”

He nodded and flashed her his shy boyish half smile, and that buzzing in her belly doubled in intensity.

So. That worked. Belle’s mouth was strangely dry all of the sudden. Because… what now? She’d successfully organized herself a ghost sleepover, but _what now?_ Well, nothing, actually. He was going to stay here, and she was going to sleep. That was all.

“I’ll go change in the bathroom,” said Belle.

“Would you like me to turn off the lights in here while you’re doing that?” he asked.

“Sure. Except the ones on the mezzanine.”

“Alright.”

“Thanks.”

Pajamas on, teeth brushed, make-up removed, hair let down, Belle left the bathroom. Rumple had put away the Scrabble board and turned off every downstairs light, and he was sitting pretty on the sofa, back straight and his hands on his knees, looking very much like he would appreciate it if Belle told him exactly what she expected of him.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, halfway up the ladder, looking over her shoulder, trying her very best to sound like she wasn’t nervous about this at all. Rumple snapped his head around and gave her a look that was equal parts realization and disbelief.

“Oh. Oh, you meant…”

“Stay. Next to me,” Belle clarified. God, was her voice shaking? It was, wasn’t it? Oh, God. “Unless-”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Rumple blurted. “I could… I could do that. If you’d like.”

She smiled, nodded, and climbed the rest of the way up, grateful he probably couldn’t see her furious blush from down there. She just wanted him near, tonight. That’s all. They’d been through a lot today, and the thought of having him up in that dusty attic alone with his thoughts and not right here next to her was just too unpleasant. That’s all. Really, that was all.

She crawled into bed, wriggled and turned until she was comfortable in her soft white sheets, and idly wondered when he’d be coming up. _How_ he’d be coming up. He could probably just move straight up through the floor, right? But then there came his head, and the rest of him, like a regular non-ghost person via the ladder, and Belle couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t ask her why she laughed this time, which was nice. She didn’t think she could properly explain it, anyway.

“Just help yourself,” Belle said, nodding towards the piles of books stacked against the wall opposite her bed. He took a minute to pick one out (Song of Solomon) and settled next to her. What she wanted to do was curl up on her side and watch him read in the soft glow of the string lights strung around the bed until her eyes fell shut, but then again, she knew that would probably have been a little creepy of her, so she forced herself to curl up with her back to him instead.

“Good night,” she murmured.

“Good night, Belle.”

God, she was tired. Was it very strange that she loved the way he said her name? Was it odd that it made her feel safe enough to let go of all of the day’s worries and simply drift off to sleep?

Not that it mattered.

…

Belle wasn’t sure what had woken her - maybe it was just a shallow sleep - but when she turned on her side and through her sleepy eyes saw a book hovering over the pillow next to her, she was happy she did. He was still there. Invisible, but there, and it looked a little magical. Made her want to giggle.

“Did I wake you?” he asked. Ah, there he was, slowly taking form; on his back, feet crossed, that book now resting on his chest.

“Nah,” Belle said, shaking her head. “Sometimes I just wake up in the middle of the night.”

“Really?” he asked, his mouth twisting into a handsome smirk. He put the book facedown on the night stand next to the bed, then shifted to lie on his side, facing her. “I thought you said you were a pretty deep sleeper?”

“I just said that to get you into bed,” she replied with a barely concealed mischievous grin.

Couldn’t help herself, could she? Nope. But he laughed, thank God.

A soft, deep laugh, low in his throat, and then he mumbled, “Stop that.”

Belle forced down her grin, put on her best look of innocent ignorance and asked “Stop what?”

“Just stop it, you little devil.”

“Never,” she giggled.

God, he was handsome, with his big, crooked grin. His beautiful brown eyes weren’t flitting about nervously, now; they were locked with hers, and it felt so comfortable for some reason.

“I’ve still been calling you Rumple. Not Samuel,” she mused, noting with a little wave of excitement that Rumple was looking at her lips as she spoke.

“You have indeed.” His voice was so much softer and deeper, now. She could listen to him talk like this for ages.

“I guess I better get used to it.”

“I don’t know. I rather like the way you say my name. My nickname,” he replied.

“Rumple?”

“Yeah,” he said, with a hint of a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “I wouldn’t mind. If you kept calling me that, I mean.”

Alright, so there was no need to say it. They both knew he meant ‘Rumple.’ But the way his stare drifted to her mouth when she said it was worth the eye roll she would inevitably subject herself to in the mirror tomorrow morning. And now they were lying there, smiling at each other as if that was a normal thing to do, and it kind of _felt_ like it was. It felt nice.

“You should go back to sleep. I kept you up until four, and you’ve been up and about all day.”

“I probably should.”

But first…

Belle reached out slowly, giving him time to realize what she was doing and make sure she wouldn’t go straight through his head when her fingers finally reached his cheek. His eyes were uncertain and his lips parted as if he was about to object, but her fingers _touched_ his cheek, so he knew, and he wanted her to. Just two fingertips. Very lightly. Like downy feathers. And she only pulled her fingers back when she had wriggled near enough to replace them with her lips, softly pressing them against his cheek. A kiss.

When she pulled away, her cheeks burned hot, and his eyes were on her lips as if he’d forgotten that they could do that. Forgotten that lips could kiss. His gaze flitted back up to her eyes, and he blinked a few times. Was this too much? But then he smiled, however briefly, and she wasn’t anxious anymore. This was alright. He was okay.

And she’d gotten her kiss.

“Night night, Rumple.”

“Night night.”

She pulled the sheets over her shoulders and gave him one last smile before closing her eyes. Yeah. She could get used to his voice right next to her in the dark.


	9. Little Leaf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle takes her ghost for a walk to see the trees in all their autumnal glory, and tries to get a little bit closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. Hello. As always, I'd like to thank you all for reading, commenting and/or leaving kudos. You really brighten my day. Thank you.
> 
> Aaaand then there's another thing.
> 
> A couple of nights ago, a good friend pointed out to me that [someone had drawn some incredibly lovely art for this story](http://foxmurphy.tumblr.com/post/94559512405), and believe me, I have _tried_ to come up with an adequate ridiculous flowery metaphor to express my utter delight, happiness, admiration and gratitude, but all of these attempts came nowhere near the accuracy of a loud, deliriously happy pterodactyl scream. So, hi, super talented Tumblr user **foxmurphy**! I am fairly shy and secretive and ridiculous, which is what has kept me from filling your inbox with said Jurassic outcries of appreciation. I will probably get over myself at some point and direct my gushing towards your inbox after all, maybe. Thank you.

Belle snored, sometimes. Just a small purr for a few seconds every half hour or so, and then she’d stop. He had to put down his book after a while when he realized he’d read the same page three times over because he kept being distracted by her little noises, then very quietly switched off all of the string lights and went back to bed. Well, he just lay there in the dark, really. He’d closed his eyes at one point, but that was just about the extent of the rest he got.

He wasn’t sure whether he’d been a hypocrite before his death too, but it would be ridiculous to deny that he was one, now. Coldly severing ties with her, then coming back the very moment he heard the sound of her voice over the deafening nothingness? Watching the poor lass break down in tears in front of his grave in the hopes that she might want to start keeping her distance, and then settling next to her in her bed, listening to her soft sleepy sounds in the darkness, just because she asked him to? Hypocrite.

It was because he didn’t really want to leave her then, and he didn’t really want her to stop inching nearer to heart now. (His heart. The one with the hole in it.) It was as if he had fallen for the illusions Belle had expertly crafted for herself. The warmth and the light and the life she projected onto him were incredibly convincing tricks of the eye.

Excuses, excuses.

And now, thanks to Belle, he had his name back - not that he was particularly attached to it. She’d shown him his grandson, and that wee golden-haired lad he caught a glimpse of as he made his retreat must have been Sam’s. He was adorable, and he’d made him smile, but he couldn’t stay there after he heard that voice calling for his grandfather. Life was for the living, and that little ray of sunshine was too young to have a ghost on his hands.

He had his memories, too. Not all of them, but he supposed that made sense; he was more than a century old, after all. So. To sum up… His marriage had failed, of course. He’d uprooted his son and brought him over to this vast, unfamiliar country. Said son, the light of his life, didn’t like him very much, for valid reasons. He’d nearly gotten his boy killed by interfering with his life choices and he’d gotten himself shot through the heart.

Killed instantly, his grandson had said. That was probably true; he couldn’t even remember hearing a gunshot. There was just the gun, his boy, that man crying, and nothing else. There was no sudden sharp pang in his chest when he remembered. He didn’t clutch his breast in pain. Nothing. Just a memory surfacing, like any other; like his hand on his son’s shoulder as they walked onto that great big ship together, or a neighbor popping by to ask if Neal would like to clean the gutters for a coin or two.

The moment Sam said he’d saved his son’s life, he knew how the story would end, all at once. Every detail, every sight, every sound and smell, right back to the front of his mind as if they’d always been there. But Belle didn’t. Poor thing didn’t have a clue. That was why he put her hand on hers towards the end of his story. Touch seemed to comfort her (she seemed calmer, less fidgety after she touched his hand in the kitchen) and he figured a woman as empathic as her would surely be overwhelmed by a story as stupidly, uselessly tragic as his. He’d felt her hand tremble a little bit and he thought she’d truly gotten it, then, but he was mistaken.

That was why he needed her to see where his dry bones lay buried in the dirt. It was just something he had to show her. She had to realize what she was dealing with. He was an anomaly, for God’s sake. He shouldn’t be here, and she shouldn’t be weaving him into her life like that - sewing a thin, grey thread of death in all of her pretty dresses. When he saw her put the rest of her daisies on his boy’s grave, that was when he knew; she didn’t really understand what he was. She wasn’t going to put those on his grave, because she hadn’t planned on seeing it. She’d sooner stick one of those daisies behind his ear and giggle at him for looking silly.

Seeing her body wracked with panic was hell, truly, but it had convinced him the message had gotten through. For a little while, at least. Until she asked him to stay with her. Next to her. Right here. And God help him, he couldn’t say no. Not anymore. Not since he heard her voice crack that night he left her, fully intending on never seeing her again. Not after that strange moment in the car. She told him she didn’t know why he came back, and he hadn’t given her an answer, but not because he didn’t have one.

He was selfish - that was why. A selfish man who heard the voice of a woman who missed his dusty old presence, and he couldn’t resist. Belle kept telling him she was his friend, and he was hers, and was it really so bad to just forget about the fact that they were heading down a dead end and kid himself for a bit? If she could do it, why couldn’t he?

She made him feel like perhaps there was a little spot for him in this world after all. As if he belonged.

And then her sleepdrunk kiss on his cheek… Well, she was probably still half-dreaming, and it would have been rude to let her lips go straight through him and have her kiss her pillow instead. (Although that would have been very amusing, too.) The fact that he could choose to be untouchable was his only defense against her tactile tendencies, now, and she’d even figured out a way to best him on _that_. Very clever, that thing she did; slowly reaching for whatever bit of him she wanted to touch, staring him down and giving him the choice. She knew fully well he didn’t want her to have to see her hand go through his body as if there wasn’t anything there at all.

Yes. That curled up bit of warmth lying next to him was a sneaky, clever, tactile little thing. If she figured out he could control himself completely, now, if she knew he’d practiced and could make his body solid for increasingly longer periods of time, he would be doomed.

At one point as he lay there remembering and thinking, wondering whether he was supposed to be mourning, whether he _was_ mourning, and whether he should be mourning _himself_ , Belle made a curious mewling sound in her sleep, and wasn’t it strange that he felt something in his chest resonate in response, when his ribcage was in a wooden box, buried six feet deep in the cold, dark ground? Oh, yes indeed; it was far too late. He was fond of her, and for whatever reason, she was fond of him, too. And so there he was - the world’s most hypocritical ghost, sharing a bed with the woman he had tried - and failed - to keep at a safe distance.

Still, when the sun rose and started to paint the room with pale colors, he allowed himself to turn on his side and gaze at her for a little while, with her face half smushed into the pillow, her hair a glorious mess and a little dark spot of drool just underneath her slightly parted lips. She hadn’t made a sound in a while - just her soft breaths and occasionally the rustling of her sheets when her foot twitched.

When she opened her eyes, she was staring right through him, but it took him a second to get it. It was as if she knew exactly where his eyes were for a moment, and it startled him just a little bit. But then she frowned, clearly confused, and mumbled, “Rumple?”

“Good morning,” he said softly, careful not to rip her from sleep’s warm embrace. She might still want to chase after a dream.

“You’re still here,” she replied, half a lazy smile on her face.

“‘Course.”

Her smile grew a little wider and she stretched and turned until she was lying on her stomach, her arms folded on her pillow, her head turned towards him. Was he ever going to get used to the utter blueness of her eyes?

“Come on out, then,” she said. “Only fair I get to see how you look first thing in the morning, too.”

“Well, you _are_ a bit of a mess,” he teased as he made himself appear, watching that smile of hers grow into a grin.

“Hi,” she giggled.

“Hi.”

She was casting little magic spells left and right. If he let her smile at him any longer, he’d…

“I’ll make you some coffee,” he said, and off he went, leaving her yawning and stretching like a cat under those thin white sheets.

“Thanks. You’re sweet.”

He made his way to the kitchen area, gave the coffee machine a distrustful look and pushed whatever button he figured would fire the whole thing up. He watched her work this strange, futuristic looking thing yesterday, and he’d made an effort to remember it, but it was still intimidating. The coffee was in a little pad, and the little pad went in the holder, and once the light stopped blinking, there was another button for him to press.

“And then I’ll just be off,” he added, hoping she wouldn’t make a fuss.

“Why?” came her voice nearer than he’d expected it. It seemed that once Belle was up, she was up, and she’d made it down the ladder quicker than she ought to have. She was handing him an empty cup. Why didn’t she just put it under the machine? Now he had to-… He sighed, took the cup, tried to look as if he hadn’t noticed their fingers brushing, and placed it there himself. He pressed the button, and the machine rumbled into life.

“Because I’d like to have a little bit of time to think,” he said, his eyes firmly fixed to the two thin but steady streams of coffee pouring out. A fascinating machine, actually. He wondered if the coffee tasted any good. He would have asked her, but she was standing by with milk and a sugar shaker, so he supposed she wouldn’t really know about that, would she?

There was a trick to getting her to let him go. Took him a little while to figure it out, but then afterwards it was glaringly obvious and he felt like an idiot for not realizing it before. The thing to do was to come across completely convinced when he said he wanted to be on his own, and not to make it sound like he was leaving for her sake. Because if she even so much as suspected that that was what he was doing, she would turn her sternest look to him and remind him that she would stand for absolutely no patronizing nonsense, no sir.

She had a point, but… Well. If she didn’t notice, what was the harm?

“Oh, alright!” she chirped. See? That was the way to do it. As long as she didn’t know that really, what he wanted to do was sit here and have her color him in with her conversation until he felt nothing like the line drawing of a man he was, she wouldn’t convince him to stay.

“That’s good, actually. I could get some writing done. I have a few articles that need finishing.”

Worked better than he’d expected, even.

“Hey, but, before you go…”

Oh, he had to be careful, now. Here’s where he could very well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. What would it be? Before you go, could you just play three more games of Scrabble with me? Watch three more Harry Potter films? Prepare a three course meal?

“Yes?”

She shuffled a little closer, her hands around her steaming cup of coffee and a hesitant, almost nervous looking smile on her face. “I was just wondering,” she started, her pretty blues looking over his shoulder and out of the window, then at his chest, then up to his eyes for just a second, then down into her cup. What on earth was that? Since when was she shy about making her sweetly worded demands?

“Would you maybe like to go for a walk with me, later?”

“A walk?”

“Yeah!” she chimed, looking him in the eyes, now. “Nowhere busy, or anything! I thought maybe we could go to the forest.”

Oh. Well, that sounded reasonable. There was just the matter of that voice in the back of his head that wanted him to take two steps back whenever Belle inched just a little bit closer on her bare feet, but… if she just tied her words into a rope, threw him one end and gave it a little tug…

“It’s just that, well, I hate that your first day out of this building was such a stressful one. That, and the leaves are changing color, and it’s very pretty out. I was meaning to go for an autumn walk anyway, but now that we know you can leave, I’d really like your company.”

She was looking at him, now; holding his gaze, making him wonder why on earth he would ever say no to a charming, harmless little suggestion as that. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the window and saw the beginnings of a nice, sunny autumn day. He looked back at Belle and saw hope in her eyes.

“What time would you like me to be here?”

Hypocrite.

…

Belle gave herself a long, hard look in the mirror. _I just said that to get you into bed._ Really? Really, Belle? Banter was one thing, but that was just inexcusable. Absolutely uncalled for. The poor man’s brain was probably working overtime trying to rationalize her increasingly forward behavior, as if he didn’t have enough things to worry about without her clumsy flirting heaped on top. Rumple may have laughed at her stupid flirty joke, but only in a way that suggested he was simply cringing on the inside, and rightly so. And so Belle brushed her teeth furiously, as if she was convinced that somehow, she could scrub the words right out of her mouth if she just brushed hard enough. Tacky.

But he’d let her kiss him, and that was just wonderful. The fact that he’d just _let_ her, had actually made an active effort to make it possible for her lips to connect with his cheek, well - that made her heart sing, her belly tingle, the corners of her mouth shoot up into a grin at the speed of light. She tried to recall how he felt against her lips, but all that did was bring back those fluttery feelings. He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t hot. It felt… normal, she thought. And he’d _let_ her.

But she couldn’t let herself get carried away by that. He only stayed last night because they’d had an intense, emotional day together, and he just needed to be with a friend. To take his mind off things. And because she’d asked, of course.

(For some reason, he didn’t tell her no very often.)

Was it odd that they hadn’t really talked about what happened? He said he didn’t feel like talking last night, but still… Did he even want to talk about it at all, Belle wondered? There were a few things she was curious about, but this was such an unusual situation and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what the etiquette was. Could she just ask him anything, now? Any old question?

Maybe she ought to just let Rumple broach the subject, in his own time. And if he took a little too long, or if she sensed that he was keeping things to himself for her sake, only then would she bring it up. That felt about right. So, not today. Not on their walk. This was to get him out of the house in daylight, to show him sights he hadn’t seen in decades. To make him see that the world still belonged to him, too.

Maybe when they got back, Sam would have e-mailed her that family tree and those pictures he had promised to send her. They could go through them together. The thought that there might be a picture of Rumple in there was so incredibly exciting to her, but at the same time, a little bit unnerving. To see him in two different places in time…

But for now, she had a few terribly annoying articles to finish. There was one about another celebrity cat whose meme status had gotten difficult for the world to ignore, and then a listicle (the word alone made her want to open a bottle of wine and drown her sorrows) about whatever the newest ‘miracle fruits’ were these days, and then something about e-cigarettes. As if she cared. But still, at least it took care of the rent. Partly.

And then it was time to break out her autumn wardrobe, which, basically, meant that she was going to deck herself out in knitwear and top it all off with a beanie. Dark grey cable knit tights, tweed high waisted skirt, whichever button up blouse she’d remembered to iron (a navy one, as it turned out) and an ochre knit cardigan - the softest, most comforting piece of clothing Belle had ever owned. And brown leather boots, of course. What was an autumn walk if not a wonderful opportunity to stomp about in puddles and piles of crunchy leaves wearing brown leather boots?

She was ready, and he was late. Only by about five minutes, but that had never happened before. Just as she was about to start worrying, Belle heard his voice - softly but surely his - calling, “Belle?”

And relief washed over her.

“Rumple!”

“I apologize for bursting in. I couldn’t knock. There are people out in the hallway,” he almost whispered. “I waited for them to leave, but they’re still chatting away.”

“That’s alright! You don’t have to knock when I’m expecting you,” she replied, smiling at where she thought his voice came from. Ah, and there he was, right in front of the door. Same as usual; white shirt, grey trousers, hair she wanted to dig her fingers in.

“That would just be rude,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, seemingly forgetting that mumbling wasn’t very polite, either.

“You can knock if you like!” she said, barely containing her giggle. “I’m just saying you don’t have to.”

“I’ll just knock, then,” he muttered, his chin tilting up the slightest bit, an eyebrow raised as if he were challenging her to _make_ him stop adhering to decorum. Did he forget that she sort of already had? Belle forced down her grin, shrugged and said, “Fine by me.”

What followed was a brief standoff; an exchange of stern looks, raised eyebrows, and slowly melting masks until their fond smiles finally broke through. This was nice - teasing and ribbing and knowing that underneath their poker faces there was still a wealth of kindness and affection just waiting to come flooding out again. She was going to do a lot of smiling today, Belle could tell. Today just felt like that kind of day.

“I just need to get my coat and my scarf, and I’ll be ready to go,” she said, snatching her scarf from the armchair where she’d left it. “If that’s okay?” He answered with a soft, “Alright,” and watched her slip into her black peacoat. “Oh, and my hat!” she cried, spinning 180° on her heels, rushing to retrieve it from her desk.

“Take your time,” said Rumple, a hint of laughter in his voice. “I promise you all the leaves won’t have fallen from the trees if you slow down a bit.”

She pulled her beanie over her ears, thwarting the cool winds before they even had the chance to ruffle her hair and chill her ears.

“I’m just excited, that’s all!” Belle chirped, looking around the room, checking to see if she’d switched off every light and turned off the coffee machine. “I love autumn. That was the one thing I looked forward to when I first moved here.”

“Actual seasons?” he teased, deadpan.

“Hey, now! We’ve got seasons over there! Just… not like this.”

She slid her phone into her coat pocket, responded to Rumple’s smug smirk with a fond eye roll, then headed towards the door.

“Ready, Rumple?”

“Mhm. I’ll stay close,” he said, fading completely.

She couldn’t help but smile at that; that sounded just a little bit too sweet in her ears. If he kept saying these adorable things, that crush of hers would start to take on potentially embarrassing proportions. And she’d sort of already massively embarrassed herself last night, hadn’t she? She really didn’t need to dig herself deeper, but he kept throwing her bigger and better digging equipment.

And yup, there were people out in the hallway, just having a chat. Belle nodded politely and then headed down the stairs, delighting in the heavy hollow sound her boots made on the wood. And then out they went, into the cold early afternoon air. She checked the time on her phone.

“It’s… 2:10 right now. It’s about a twenty minute walk, I think. That’s not too long, right?”

Belle began to walk down the street, her hands dug deep into her coat pockets, but when there came no reply, she stopped dead in her tracks and called, “Rumple?”

“I’m here,” he whispered from somewhere to the right of her.

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“Because we’re in public.”

“Yeah, but no-one’s close enough to overhear you,” Belle said, looking this way and then that to see if Rumple had spotted any passersby that she hadn’t.

“Still, people will think you’re talking to yourself,” he explained.

“I don’t care. Besides, they’ll probably just think I’m on the phone.”

“Are you planning on holding your phone to your ear all the way to the forest?” he muttered.

“Bluetooth headset, dude,” she clarified.

“I’m… sure those are all real words, but…” he muttered, sounding just a little bit confused. Belle tried not to laugh; he needed reassurance, now.

“It’s a little thing that goes in your ear, and it’s connected to your phone - but it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it, okay? No-one’s going to roll up and cart me off to a shrink just cause they think they saw me talking to myself.”

If she could see him, and if she could touch him, then right then would have been the moment she would have grabbed his hand and tugged him along, but all she could do then was wait and listen for a response. Only took about six seconds, but six seconds of standing still in the middle of the sidewalk felt more like an eternity, so when she finally heard a defeated sounding, “I suppose you’re right,” Belle sighed in relief.

“Good,” she said, turning the corner. “Cause if you think I’m going to shut up for twenty minutes, you haven’t been paying attention.”

His soft laughter made her smile come right back. Good. Because this was his first aimless, leisurely walk since he’d… since he’d died. And Belle didn’t want him fretting or on edge; she wanted him all softness and ease, and making pleasant conversation with her as they walked past shops and houses and parks and people. She wanted to know that he was seeing all of this - truly seeing it. Not with his head down and his eyes to the poured concrete under their feet, but his chin proudly up and his back straight; as present in this world as she was.

Because all of this was here for him, too. He didn’t have to lock himself into that dark attic room of his, like he thought he had to. Rumple had a right to all of this, even if he didn’t think so himself, and Belle would show him, somehow, that it was alright that he’d stuck around. That even though they didn’t know why, or how, and in all likelihood never would, it was _alright_. And he could stay.

“I’m really glad you decided to come with me,” Belle said, strangely lost for words after practically promising to chat his ears off.

“I’m glad I came. It’s… it’s been a while,” he replied. Yes. It had been, hadn’t it? Yesterday didn’t count. Yesterday they were on a mission. This? Was just a walk.

It was very chilly, even though the sun was out. The wind was making the trees sway, the ends of her scarf flap about, and great big towering clouds move at great speeds high up above. This was lovely. What would be even more lovely right about now was her arm hooked in his. Oh, but no. She didn’t need those thoughts right now. Those weren’t helpful at all.

“Have you ever been to that forest?” she asked as they left the town’s shopping district and rows of beautiful old houses and well watered lawns in streets lined with oak trees in their autumn hues replaced colorful shopfronts and passing cars.

“Not that I recall. Do you often go?”

“I used to! It’s lovely. It’s this mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, so come October, you’ve got the entire color spectrum in there.”

“Oh?”

“Mhm. Used to give my dad a headache cause I refused to end our walk until I found each and every color leaf I wanted.”

“And are you planning on embarking on such a quest this afternoon as well?” he asked, and Belle could practically _hear_ his amused smirk dripping from his words. She didn’t mind one bit. A smile was a smile.

“No,” she laughed, shaking her head. “My obsessive leaf collecting days are over. I still have them, though. I keep them between the pages of this great big old hardcover dictionary in the back of my closet.”

“Well, well. An amateur botanist to boot,” he lilted, the playful tone of his voice making her want to bump her shoulder into his. She really needed to stop having these impulses, or she’d snap and launch herself at him one day, fly straight through him and hug a lamp post instead, or something equally embarrassing.

Belle, set on getting Rumple to connect with his world again, made a point of it to comment on little things they passed in the streets; like a dog barking in someone’s front yard, or a cat staring at them from a second story window (“Wave at that cat! I wanna know if it can see you!” “Do you think it’s going to _wave back?_ ”) or a truly awful parking job if they saw one, just to make sure that he was letting it all in, and that he hadn’t crawled into his own head - which he’d probably decorated to look just like his little attic room.

Time seemed to pass pretty quickly that way, until suddenly, they stood at the beginning of a trail that led deep into the dense forest, and their conversation stilled for a moment, making room for distant birdsong and the sound of creaking boughs bending to the wind’s will.

“How are you feeling?” Belle asked. They’d walked far, and they’d talked almost all of the way here, and she still wasn’t sure how he… _worked_ , exactly. She was sure he’d tell her if he needed to rest, or recharge somehow, but still she wanted to make sure.

“Fine,” he said. “Normal.”

“Anchored?”

“Yes,” he replied, softly. Belle smiled, content with his answer.

So into the forest they went, walking slow, twigs snapping and leaves crunching under her feet. It smelled deliciously of rotting leaves and moss, and Belle breathed in deep, letting autumn fill her lungs, then imagined for just a few, ridiculous seconds that she was a dragon and the white curls of her breath in the cold air were veritable pillars of smoke from the fire burning hot in her belly.

And when that bit of silliness had passed, she suddenly realized - Rumple’s breath didn’t do that. There were no puffs of white when he talked to her, or laughed, or sighed theatrically when she teased him. And it was… strange, yes, but it was stranger still that Belle hadn’t yet run out of little differences to notice. It didn’t matter, though. It shouldn’t. Why did this little detail strike her with more of a chill, when she’d already seen him turn invisible and back again and felt her hand move through his like through a hologram? (It felt like missing a step on a staircase, but sad.)

“I always thought it would be great to live in a forest,” he mused, rescuing her from her thoughts. He’d switched sides, now, and he was walking next to the trail for some reason.

“Really?” she asked. “In a cabin, or what? Or like, a tent?”

“A cabin or a cottage, of course,” he grumbled, making her want to laugh. “A tent? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Some people like that sort of thing!”

“Some people like not having indoor plumbing?”

Belle giggled and was about to ask him to expand on this cabin in the woods thing of his when a jogger came from the opposite direction, and she clamped her mouth firmly shut until she passed. But then came another, and another, and then someone on a bike, and Belle decided that enough was enough, abandoned the trail and walked straight into the forest instead.

“Come on,” she whispered, pushing some ferns to the side and stepping over a large branch that must have fallen during one of the storms they’d had, lately.

“You’re not going to get us lost, are you?”

“It’s a forest, not a maze. Come on, we’ll find a place to sit so we can talk.”

And it didn’t take them very long to come across a tiny clearing with a freshly felled tree just begging to be used as a makeshift bench. Belle sat down, scooted back, smoothed down her skirt and then patted the space next to her. She did that a lot these days, but if she didn’t, Rumple would always find another place to sit; somewhere a little too far away for Belle’s liking.

It had been a fairly old tree, and her feet hung just an inch or so above the ground. This was an excellent place to sit and talk. They were far enough from the trail, and they were surrounded by beautiful old pines and younger birch trees, and the colors were absolutely stunning.

“Aren’t you gonna come out?” she asked. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. At least she could hear that he was right next to her, exactly where wanted him to sit. But still, she really wanted to see him. She was getting better and better at reading his voice, but it was just so much easier if she could see the lines in his forehead and the twitch of his lips. That, and she just… liked looking at him, really.

“Aw, come on. If anyone decided to stray from the trail, we would hear them, first.”

He was silent for a few seconds, then sighed and muttered, “Alright then. But you’re on your own with damage control if someone walks up and sees me.”

Gradually, Rumple began to fade in. He was a bit more translucent than usual in this bright daylight compared to the warm, dimmed lights and the red brick walls of her apartment. But he was actually sitting pretty close for a change, and Belle had no trouble seeing that for all his grumbling and worrying, he seemed to be in a pretty good mood; a faint smile on his face and his eyes clear and bright as he looked around the clearing, taking it all in.

“So, tell me about this forest cottage thing,” Belle said, offering him an encouraging smile, folding her hands in her lap.

“Is it really that strange an idea? I thought you said you liked coming here?”

“I did! I do! I just don’t know if I’d like to live here. So sell it to me.”

“ _Sell_ it to you?” he repeated, quirking an amused eyebrow at her.

“Yup! Go on!”

He chuckled softly, then looked around again, seemingly for inspiration. After a few seconds of contemplation, he said, “Doesn’t all of this speak for itself?” waving his hand through the air in a smooth gesture as if he were presenting her with the beauty of their surroundings. Belle giggled and shrugged.

“Sure, it’s beautiful! But I also like the beauty of not having to trek through the wilderness to go grocery shopping.”

“You’d just go once a month and buy up all the frozen pizza and cheap wine,” he muttered, laughter audible just underneath the surface of his voice.

“Good point. D’you think I could get Chinese food delivered in the middle of the woods?”

“You’d barely ever have any unwanted visitors,” he continued, ignoring her secretly serious question.

“Yeah, sure, but if there ever is one, it’s probably really bad news,” Belle countered, raising an eyebrow at him.

“So don’t open the door.”

“I could _not_ open the door in the comforts of my flat.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, and for a moment there, Belle almost thought he had run out of arguments. But no, of course not. Not her wordy, stubborn ghost. He was just gathering his words, preparing to charge. He took a deep breath, straightened his back and listed, “Campfires. Swimming in the lake. Fireflies at night. The best view of the stars.”

“Hmm… Yeah, I’ll give you those. But that’s just in the summer.”

“The sound of snow falling from branches in the winter, the feel of it crackling under your boots. You could build a snowman in the shape of a yeti - give some poor hikers a fright.”

“What else?” she giggled.

“Peace and quiet?” he said, giving her a small, lopsided smile.

“I think it might be a little too quiet for me,” said Belle. “Complete silence can be a little unnerving, don’t you think?”

“Oh, that’s true,” he agreed with a thoughtful nod. “But there’d still be birdsong, and crickets, and wee forest creatures stepping on twigs in the middle of the night, and deer crossing the stream and moving pebbles around in the water.”

“You’re making it all sound very Blair Witch Project.”

“I’m afraid that’s another reference I don’t quite…” he said, trailing off.

“It’s a horror movie thing. Don’t worry about it,” she chuckled, waving his concern away. He nodded and looked straight ahead again, silent now.

The wind rustled the leaves and the needles up above, making the very tips of the tallest trees bend and sway. In the distance, a woodpecker went crazy on what must have been a prime piece of bug-infested wood. Rumple was right; this place wasn’t silent at all. It was alive.

“I don’t get scared that easily,” she mused, “but I think living on my own so far away from other people might be a little intimidating, you know?”

“You wouldn’t have to live on your own.”

Her heart skipped a beat and she wished it hadn’t, because she knew he didn’t mean to say what some very eager but very dumb bit of her brain so desperately wanted to hear. And sure enough, as if he sensed her initial confusion, Rumple clarified, “You’ll meet some strapping young man in that library of yours, one day. Make sure he’s checking out a bunch of cookbooks, some of your favorite classics and a wilderness survival guide, and you should be set.”

Oh. Oh, God. He smiled at her, but it was faint and almost faltering at one corner of his mouth, and _God_ , he really hadn’t picked up on any of it, had he? As if her lingering stares and the furtive glances at his lips and the kiss on his cheek and the occasional outrageously clumsy flirting had just whizzed right over his head.

Wait… Her train of thought was abruptly derailed by a curious sight. What was that thing stuck in his hair? Was that… a leaf? It was! It was a little dried up leaf from a tree or a bush somewhere, and it had ended up right on top of his head and stayed there instead of falling right through him, which meant… that he was solid right now.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re staring right through me,” he said, giving her a faint, slightly nervous looking smile.

“Sorry, got a bit lost in my thoughts, there,” Belle replied. The sight of him with that little bit of forest stuck in his hair was absolutely precious. With a great big grin she had to force herself to subdue, she looked straight ahead for a moment, allowing her to gather her thoughts… and her courage.

Rumple had told her that moving through objects came easy to him, and that becoming solid was a conscious choice in comparison. So why, exactly, could she reach out and touch him right now? Was he anticipating her to? The very thought that all of her hints and her little reprimand in the kitchen had actually stuck with him made her so incredibly happy she found it difficult to sit still. If she had a tail, it would be wagging. Good thing she didn’t.

Okay, so, she _might_ have sort of told herself she would pack her lovestruck antics in a bit and let this thing fizzle out, but… she was only human. And he wasn’t making it any easier.

Belle bit her lip and wrestled that excited grin into submission once and for all, then suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, she scooted to the left until she felt her arm bump into Rumple’s, her knee knock against his. It was like something had sparked deep inside of her. A little light, a little warmth. Electric. A complete cliché, but no less intense.

He turned his head quick, his eyes wide in surprise. Belle tried her best to smile as if she hadn’t even noticed the fact that they were touching more than they had ever touched before, which was no easy task, because her heart was beating a fast rhythm in her chest, and all she could think was that this wasn’t nearly close enough. She wanted more.

“We should head back if you’re cold,” he murmured softly, his dark eyes trying to read her face for a clue. She’d caught him off guard, and he seemed lost. Confused. Unsure. And he was trying to make sense of her, like she was some curious puzzle with a few pieces missing.

“Oh, I’m not cold,” Belle said, keeping up her stare. How was he going to rationalize this?

For a moment, there, it looked as if Rumple was going to say something. Explain himself, maybe; tell her why he was solid right now. But then he blinked a few times and simply fixed his gaze to the trees up ahead instead. Clearing his throat with a little cough, he leaned back with his palms against the rough bark for support, and rested the weight of his upper body on his arms.

Okay, so now their arms weren’t touching anymore. Well played. But Belle didn’t let that discourage her. Instead, she took it as an opportunity.

Because with Rumple’s arm now out of the way, there was room for her to just ever so slightly nestle herself against his side, so that was what she did. Just a scoot and a few wriggles and their thighs touched and she was leaning into him. Side by side. Her heart racing. Blood hot in her veins. She couldn’t feel much through her layers of clothing, but the certain, steady touch was so incredibly nice after so many days of barely anything at all.

Except she could tell he’d tensed up, and her stomach wouldn’t stop doing somersaults, and she was suddenly afraid that this was too much for him. That she’d pushed him too far. And what if he asked her what on earth was wrong with her? What if he’d figured it out?

Rumple slowly turned towards her and tilted his head down a little bit. She caught his gaze and held it, an inquisitive look on her face; raised eyebrows, a small smile, but it took her all the effort in the world to look like she wasn’t burning up inside. They were so, so close. If she pushed herself up a bit and craned her neck, she could…

“Are you sure you’re not cold?”

His voice was barely loud enough for a soft murmur, and Belle didn’t even bother disguising the fact that she had some trouble figuring out which part of him she wanted to stare at most; his eyes or his lips?

“Mhm. Positive.”

Both. Both was good.

This was a little bit like in that dream she had. All she needed now was his arm wrapped around her shoulders and the courage to slide hers around his waist, and it would be eerily similar. She even felt that almost uncomfortable heat she felt in that dream, but not because they were in a crowded room full of warm bodies, and not because she’d had a glass of wine - they weren’t and she hadn’t. It was just a simple blush. A rising heat as if from a lightbulb deep inside of her, climbing up, filling her chest with a glowing light, wrapping tight around her heart, then creeping up her neck to tint her cheeks red. She didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that. She felt it. And Rumple might see that color on her cheeks, but he wouldn’t know where it came from. He wouldn’t know how deep it went.

Or how warm he made her feel.

“I think you’re lying,” he finally said, a half smirk pulling at his lips. Oh, good grief. He didn’t have a clue, did he?

“Nope. Not cold. Not lying.”

“You’re trying to steal body heat from a ghost,” he said, his voice deeper now, almost a growl. Almost made her want to growl right back. “I’d say you’re desperate.”

Desperate? Yes. Cold? Still no.

He stood up abruptly, leaving her alone on that tree and bereft of the touch she’d actually bloody _dreamed_ of, but her childish pout fell away when instead of turning invisible again and telling her to get a move on before her feet froze to the ground, Rumple smiled and held out his hand. He’d taken away one touch and offered her another, and if Belle wasn’t completely convinced of this man’s blissful ignorance, she might have thought that it was some sort of consolation prize.

Pretty effective, if it was.

Belle reached out and the brush of their fingers before he gently closed his hand around hers almost made her forget about her stolen touch. This one was offered freely. This one was precious. She found herself curiously unable to let go after he’d helped her down from the log, to Rumple’s obvious bewilderment. With that leaf still stuck in his hair and his face all serious and confused, he made a particularly silly sight, and Belle couldn’t keep her laughter contained anymore. It bubbled and boiled over, and she couldn’t help it.

“What is it?” he asked, clearly torn between taking offense at her giggles or letting them infect him and joining in.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just…” She stepped closer, still holding on to his hand. There were no heels on these boots of hers, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach. “You’ve got a little something right here.”

She took the little leaf between her fingers and carefully pulled it free from Rumple’s brown and grey strands of hair. Was she blushing all over now or was his hand getting warmer in hers?

“There we go,” she said, grinning proudly at him, holding up the offending bit of nature that no longer adorned Rumple’s ghostly locks for his inspection. His mouth opened and rounded in an unvoiced ‘Oh,’ and Belle let it float to the forest floor with the rest of its fallen friends.

Only then did she let go of his hand. Was that a little squeeze she felt, right before his touch fell away? No longer on her tiptoes and suddenly aware of their closeness, Belle felt small and stupid. No flirting, she’d promised herself. Well, no; less flirting - let’s be realistic. At least until she knew for sure that Rumple had had some time to think about everything - really, _properly_ think about it all, and they’d talked about how he felt, and what he remembered, and then…

… And then what, exactly?

Ruby would know. Ghost or not, Ruby would definitely, definitely know.

“How… long has that been there?” Rumple asked. Belle could see him swallow and felt his eyes on her, and she wondered…

“Not too long,” she lied.

“Oh. Thank you.”

And still she wondered…

Could he see right through her, too?

“Be weird to walk down the street accompanied by a floating leaf, right?” she said, forcing herself to grin even as a sudden wave of ice cold doubt and lovesickness washed over her, drenching her to the bone. Well. _Now_ she was cold. His soft stifled laugh and his amused smile right before he faded out from under her nose were just warm enough to keep her from freezing to the spot. Little flames for her to keep safe in her memories and warm her hands.

Back to the trail and out of the woods they went, wordless. Belle knew the walk back would be a quiet one because she had some serious thinking to do, and Rumple seemed to be okay with that. He walked alongside her, and yet hers was the only shadow cast. They’d put the sun behind them, now, so she couldn’t really _not_ have noticed - her shadow was always at least one step ahead, clamoring for her attention, demanding she notice this little difference between them, too. And sure; she could do that. Belle simply noticed it, acknowledged it, and then stored it away with the rest of their irrelevant differences. Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter one bit. Nice try, shadow. The man could hold her hand, make her a cup of coffee and play Scrabble with her, and that’s all that mattered, for now. Why even expect him to cast a shadow in his invisible state at all? Basic physics! … Right?

It was right about then, just as she’d put her contrarian shadow back in its place that Rumple broke the silence, bidding Belle, “Wait.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Your little cat theory. Are you still curious about that?”

“… Oh! Yes!”

Belle looked to her left and saw that they’d come to a standstill at that same house. That calico cat up on the second floor was still there, kept company by a little porcelain clown. The pair of them were framed by the window’s pretty lace curtains, and the cat’s yellow eyes were staring down at her. Or him, which was Belle’s theory. And he’d mocked her for her curiosity, then, hadn’t he? Okay, so yeah, cats weren’t famous for being very responsive, so Belle wasn’t sure how they’d know for sure, but wouldn’t it be neat if they found out it could see him? Useless information, but neat nonetheless.

“What was it you wanted me me to do? Wave?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, unfortunately, that’s what I’ve been doing for about ten seconds, now,” he muttered. Belle could hear that he was trying not to laugh at himself, and it was making her feel very, very giggly. That cat wasn’t batting an eye.

“Seriously?”

“Well, yes! It was an interesting hypothesis. Am I ever glad no-one can see me.”

“ _I’m_ not! I can’t believe you’re waving at a cat! You must look ridiculous!” she teased.

“It was your suggestion!” he cried, momentarily forgetting that he was oh so worried about alerting other people to his presence not too long before.

“And you mocked me for it, but here you are, expecting a cat to wave back.”

“Excuse me! You were the one who-… Oh, very well,” said Rumple, the last of his laughter still lacing his words, “come along, before someone calls the police to inform them about a crazy lady laughing at a cat.”

She almost thought it was the wind gently pushing her on, but no - it was his hand in the small of her back for a moment, making her smile, guiding her on their way home. Just a few seconds. Maybe three. And the fact that she was counting at all made it abundantly clear to Belle that she was in heaps upon heaps of trouble.


	10. Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a family tree, some blankets and a library. Things that have been stacking up look like they might just come tumbling down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you x 1000000, as always.
> 
> I'm just gonna leave this here. Cause I don't know what to say. Yup.
> 
> ... Bye. <3

Belle closed the door behind them while he tried his very best not to think about her red cheeks and her mouth so near, her wee feet just barely dangling above the ground and the soft pressure of her thigh - and certainly not her eyes on his lips. But clearly, that wasn’t really working out for him.

She had to have been freezing out there to sidle up to him like that. Lying about it was just her way of being playfully contrary. Or perhaps she was too proud to admit it - it didn’t really matter why - but the alternative was awful. And beautiful. And entirely sweet. And thrilling. And very, very wrong. That’s why it had to have been the cold.

Ah, but this was getting to be more than just a little exhausting. Denial didn’t help. Ignoring it didn’t help. Playing along and turning it into a joke made it _worse_. Made her bolder, even. She’d gotten dangerously close to calling his bluff out there in that forest of hers, with nowhere for him to run but the trees.

He was tired. She was tireless.

“Before you go, let me just check my e-mail,” she said, shrugging off her coat and draping it somewhere nowhere near her coat stand. Why did she even own one if she just kept leaving everything that belonged there somewhere completely different?

“Sam could have sent us something.”

_Us_.

“Did he say he would?” he asked. He gathered her coat in his arms and grabbed her scarf which she’d left on the table while she sat and waited for her computer to start up.

“Yeah. You must have left by then. He said he had a recent family tree he could e-mail. And some pictures Neal kept.”

“Oh. Alright.”

He walked up behind her to take her hat off her busy little head. She made a soft surprised sound, then looked up at him with a grateful smile. He wanted to smooth her disobedient hair down. He didn’t.

“Thanks. Forgot.”

“Mhm.”

Onto the coat stand they went. Not on the bookcase, not on a dining chair, not on the table - on the coat stand. Where they belonged. What was this strange creature’s objection to keeping things somewhere sensical?

“He sent me an e-mail!”

This would be good for her. If there were pictures of him, and she could see him in black or white or sepia, or even a cracked daguerrotype, maybe then it would finally hit home. Sad. Utterly preventable. Completely his fault. But good. He hoped she wasn’t expecting him to come and look at whatever bits of his past had been dug up and exposed to harsh daylight. He hadn’t really seen his face in ages, and he wasn’t particularly interested in seeing it now. He had seen his reflection in the television screen - but that was blurry and distant; just perfect. So he didn’t walk over to her desk just yet and instead sat himself down on her sofa.

“Aren’t you going to come see?” she asked. Ever the perceptive thing.

“What did he send you?” he fired back, hoping Belle would mistake his outright refusal to answer her question for genuine curiosity.

“Well, Sam says his son’s going to scan all of the pictures when he has the time, but he did send us a family tree.”

“Any royalty in there?”

“Just one royal pain in the arse,” she muttered, making him laugh despite his best efforts.

She was silent for a while, and all he heard were little clicks and, what almost tempted him into joining her at her desk: something in between a gasp and a giggle.

“Oh my God! Hey. Rumple.”

“Hm?”

“Rumple.”

“Yes?”

“Rumple!”

Right, okay, clearly she wanted him to turn around and look, so he sighed and twisted around as much as he could, one arm over the back of the sofa. She’d turned on her chair and was beaming at him, her pretty eyes hit by the light of the setting sun and striking a major blow to his defenses.

“Guess how many great great grandkids you have,” she said, the excitement in her voice bigger than the grin on her face, brighter than the gleam in her eye.

“More than one? How many?”

“Guess!”

“Waste of time,” he muttered, waving his hand. “Just tell me.”

If the sun wasn’t still painting her face the warmest colors then, he would have turned away already, but light was important. Light created shadows and tinted colors and changed one shape into another, and his fingers itched to get these lines and planes onto paper while they were still in the front of his mind.

“You making a fuss right now is what’s a waste of time. Just guess!”

“I don’t like guessing.”

“But you like indulging me,” she teased. She was getting bolder and bolder. He rather liked it. He really, really shouldn’t.

“Increasingly less so.”

That was a lie, of course, but now she’d shifted and moved out of the light that had made her look so distractingly unearthly for a moment, he found himself quite able to put up a bit of a fight again, even in the face of that theatrical eye roll and the smirk trying to break free of her teeth’s grip.

“Oh come on, you big grump,” she sang, her voice deeper. “Just give me a number.”

“One?” he sighed.

“That’s not a guess!” she cried. “You know that for sure!”

“Which is why I said it.”

“It’s more than one, Rumple. Come on. Don’t be a baby,” Belle pleaded. “And don’t say two.”

“Three.”

“Oh my God, you impossible-”

“I told you I don’t like to guess,” he said, trying not to laugh at her obvious frustration.

“Fine! It’s seven!”

“ _Seven?_ ”

Her smug grin looked like it was about to split her face in half. She gave him a slow nod and added, “Four boys, three girls.”

Seven. Seven? Seven little…

“You’re joking.”

“Seven, I swear. Come look if you don’t believe me.”

“No, I do, I just… Do you know their names?”

Her chair scraped against the wood floor as she pushed it back and stood up. Laptop cradled to her chest, she walked over to the sofa and sat down next to him. There she was, almost thigh to thigh again. Did she think better of sliding up against him this time? All of her bravery gone? Or had she simply made her point back there in the forest? She balanced her laptop on her knees and angled it a bit towards him, showing him the tree.

But it looked nothing like a tree. Not really. Or, a very strange, upside down one, perhaps, but that was being generous. What should have been its roots were actually the littlest, greenest leaves.

“Your great granddaughter Dara has three kids,” Belle explained, pointing at their little nodes on the screen. “Leo, Troy and Annabelle. See? Two boys and one girl.”

Three leaves right there. He blinked against the harsh blue light of the screen and snapped his mouth shut the moment he noticed it had fallen open in mild shock. He felt her eyes on him for just a second, but then she pointed at the next few twigs to have sprouted leaves.

“And Dara has a twin sister, Louise; and she’s got two girls and one boy. Jennifer, Helen and Felix.”

“Twins?”

“Mhm! Are there twins on your side of the family?”

“No,” he said softly, shaking his head. “Not that I know of.”

Another three.

“Well, then there’s George, who’s a little bit younger, and he’s got one boy. Ed. You saw him, right?”

The smallest leaf with the golden hair he saw stomping down the stairs in his pajamas right before he fled and hid in Belle’s car like a child.

“I did, yeah.”

“I’m so pleased you were still there,” she chimed, smiling at him in a way that chiseled away another brick from his walls. She did look pleased. She looked happy for him, and he couldn’t help but offer a little smile of his own in return.

“And, uh,” Belle started, licking her lips, her eyes fluttering from the screen to the his face and back again distractedly, “finally, we’ve got Andrew. He’s Sam’s youngest son, and he doesn’t have any kids yet, but he might eventually. And you know twins often skip a generation, right?”

He didn’t, but he nodded anyway. Belle would know these things.

“So when Dara and Louise’s kids grow up and have kids of their own…”

“You’re telling me I’ve unleashed a plague.”

“Yup,” she said, giggling. “A very cute one.”

She moved up the tree a bit until there was just his name… and Milah’s. It felt strange to read her name there, black on white. The end of the line. They’d chopped down their trees together, Milah and he. They came from a similar home situation in that they didn’t really have one at all. No real home. No warmth. They’d given it their best shot together and they had to burn all of their bridges to do so.

“Milah,” Belle said softly. “That’s a pretty name.”

“Yes.”

A pretty name he hadn’t heard in decades. Belle turned and searched his face for something. His mood, maybe. He gave her another little smile he hoped would reassure her, then looked back at where their names stood side by side. The roots at the very top of the tree - weak, uncertain, cowardly, mismatched. It was a miracle to see those seven great great grandchildren sprout from their ill-fated temporary union.

“Do you miss her?” came her voice through a thickening mist of memories gathering. She closed her laptop, put it on the coffee table and sat back again, then turned towards him with a look on her face he couldn’t look at for very long, as it was so gentle and so incredibly kind he felt it tugging at a loose thread of something he wasn’t sure he wanted her to unravel.

“No,” he replied. “I stopped missing her a long time ago.”

They were in love, once, truly. They needed one another, then, but they were terrible foundations on which to build a home. When he died, they hadn’t spoken to each other in… oh, about twenty two years. There were times, after she’d left, that he feared he would never find out if something had happened to her. Times when he wondered if his son would find out about his mother’s death before he did, and now he knew for sure that he had.

“How old was Neal? When she left?” She sounded so careful, now. Not probing or prodding, just placing a dainty finger on a scar and asking him how that got there.

“Six. Seven. Too young. Leaving me, that’s one thing. I can’t blame her for that. I never did. But Neal…”

He was very grateful Belle didn’t have any clocks ticking away in her apartment. She waited for the end of his sentence until she caught on that it was never going to come, then nodded and asked him, “You cooked for him, didn’t you?”

“Whenever I could,” he said softly, feeling his mouth curl into a sad attempt at a grin. “He didn’t like spaghetti, though.”

He liked stew, and a bit of butter on his potatoes, and cake, and roast chicken. He’d eat it all up and lick his plate clean and tell him how delicious it was, and ask if there was more. They’d go to the butcher’s together sometimes and he would press a few coins in his little hand so he could pay and feel all grown up. He liked a glass of milk before bedtime, and sometimes he’d crawl into his bed in the middle of the night and he needn’t say a word, because he knew: he missed his mum. When he couldn’t sleep, he’d carry him into the kitchen and give him a bit more milk, or a little piece of bread - barely bigger than a crumb - and tucked him in all over again. He baked a chocolate cake for Neal’s birthday, and when it was his own a few months after, his boy insisted he have one too, so they baked it together and made a glorious mess of their kitchen. Flour everywhere. Chocolate fingerprints on the cupboards. They went out and bought a ton of candles but they didn’t all fit on top so Neal simply stuck them in the sides, and he’d laughed so hard he inhaled a bit of flour and nearly coughed all over his own birthday cake.

And he must have said some of it or all of it out loud, because Belle was looking at him and nodding, her eyebrows knit together. She looked like she might cry. He wished he hadn’t looked at her.

He’d always wondered if he could cry with this illusion of a body of his, and he now knew for certain that he couldn’t - now that he wanted to. Now that there was a sea of sadness roaring in his chest; rising and hitting the back of his throat, making his eyes sting, but the waves never, ever breaking - no matter how badly he needed them to.

He had no body but his heart hurt. His lungs were bursting. His ribs felt bruised.

Belle’s small hand reached for his cheek, slowly, and when he sighed it came out in little shivering bursts. Still no tears. Never any tears. But her hand inched ever nearer; giving him time to move away, which would have been the right thing to do. He shouldn’t be leaning into her touch, fitting his cheek in her palm. He shouldn’t melt into her like that, but he’d made the mistake of looking up and into her unbelievably blue eyes filled with genuine concern, and something gave.

He wasn’t sure how it was even possible, because he was something even less than hollow, but somehow his chest felt heavy - like his lungs were full of liquid, and it weighed him down, down, until he was lost to the softness of her lap and her fingers came running through his hair with no hesitation. Soothing, combing - little pressure points traveling all over. Pressure, but then warmth, and that was strange…

But he took it, absorbed it, refused to question it and let it fill the cracks and smooth away the sharpness until the sad sea stilled to a gentle lapping of little waves over the shore, and his eyes slid shut. His head in her lap, one small hand in his hair, the other arm draped over his shoulder, keeping him close. He was curled up like a child and he didn’t make a sound. Couldn’t cry. Still couldn’t.

“Neal and Sam got to make their own birthday cakes,” she murmured, her voice so near he could feel her breath in his hair. “Because of you.”

She might have said something softly in his ear, and he might have felt her lips press a kiss to his hair but at that point it felt so much as if he was dreaming, and if he was dreaming, that meant he was sleeping, and he hadn’t in so incredibly long that he was very much alright with that. He was so, so tired, his eyes heavy as lead. With the sound of her breathing for a lullaby, he let a shallow sleep swallow him whole for the first time in years, and when he opened his eyes again, the room was darker.

But the heaviness was gone.

Well, apart from the slight weight on his head and his shoulder - her hands, still there where she’d put them. He was still touchable. Slowly, he sat up and saw his knees, and his hands, and his hair falling in front of his eyes. He was still visible, too. He scarcely dared look at her, but her softly murmured, “Hey,” gave him the courage he needed. She was smiling. Of course she was.

“I’m sorry. You could have told me to move. You needn’t have… you know.”

Belle shook her head.

“That’s alright. Kept my lap nice and warm.”

Warm. Yes. But that was still strange. He hadn’t really… felt warmth, or cold, or much of anything in decades. Pressure, sure. There was no way to manipulate objects without feeling pressure; he would have crushed things or dropped them otherwise. But warmth?

“How long-”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, smiling faintly and carefully as if he were still fragile.

She couldn’t see that he didn’t feel heavy anymore. Something had lifted and everything felt different somehow. What had she done to him? The sun had set lower, and it was dark and quiet in her little apartment. He wanted to thank her for something but he wasn’t sure what it was. Pretending it was normal to nurse a ghost through some sort of emotional crisis, perhaps? Yes, that was a start, at least. But those words didn’t quite come.

“It’s very dark,” he said, stating the obvious because he wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth if he tried to say anything meaningful right now. Anything sincere. He stood up to switch the lights on and he felt her stare on him every step of the way. A _click_ and the room was bathed in light again, an abrupt change of atmosphere that came over him all at once. Heaviness gone. Warm light chasing away a few slivers of darkness.

“Yeah. Days are getting shorter,” Belle mused. He heard her groan and assumed she was stretching her legs, making him feel more than a little guilty for keeping her captive for God knows how long.

“I’ll uh… I think I’ll head back up, now.”

“You can stay, if you like.”

“I know. But…”

“It’s alright. I understand.”

Did she? Because he didn’t. Why had he been wallowing in the pain she’d helped bring back and accepted none of the comfort she offered? What exactly had been the point of that? All she’d been trying to do was pull him in from the rain, and all he’d been doing was pulling back and drawing her out into the downpour.

“But Belle?”

“Hm?”

She’d taken some of that weight away somehow.

“I feel better. Thank you.”

And she deserved to know that.

“Anytime,” she said. Anytime.

…

In his room, as the tired old lightbulb above him faithfully shone on, he put his pen to paper and tried to get her eyes out of his system before they got to be all he could think about and consumed him completely. But he couldn’t just draw her eyes and keep it at that; they just weren’t the same without those lips, and that nose she couldn’t keep out of his business, and her round cheeks and those faintly curling locks of hair that fell to frame her face so perfectly.

But really, _really_ \- what had she done to him?

He felt better. He did. That wasn’t a lie. But there was still something vast and unpleasant looming in the distance, and it was difficult to take his eyes off the gathering storm clouds long enough to appreciate the little bit of sunshine that seemed to have been following him around lately.

Speaking of which - was that Belle’s voice he heard somewhere down below?

“Rumple? Can I come up?”

He didn’t have a clock up there (he could always just drop through the attic floor and into one of the apartments to check the time) but he knew it was late. He’d filled too many pages with doodles and sketches for it to be any sort of civilized hour.

“Just a moment,” he replied. “I’ll let the ladder down.”

He gathered his papers and slid them into a drawer, not wanting her to go snooping around and discover he had some difficulties trying to get her face out of his thoughts.

“Be careful, now,” he warned. Didn’t want to hear that ladder hit her head on its way down. The hatch creaked open and the ladder slid down with a little more noise than he’d hoped for, and there she stood down below, in her pajamas and on her bare feet, carrying what appeared to be some blankets and a pillow under one arm and a large tote slung over her shoulder. Oh, dear. This wasn’t an impromptu sleepover, was it?

“Could you give me a hand with these?” whispered Belle. “Can’t see you, by the way.”

Right. Yes. He made himself visible, stepped a few rungs down and reached down to take what she was handing him. Blankets, it seemed like. And a pillow?

“What’s all this?” he asked distractedly, gathering all of it to his chest, trying to figure out how many blankets he was holding. Had to have been at least three.

“Just some things I thought you might like,” she replied, climbing up until with a little sigh, she walked past him to plop the tote down on his desk. “And don’t give me any grief over this, Rumple. It’s no bother.”

Well, he _had_ been about to object, but he was a warned man, now, so he meekly joined her at the desk, where she was unloading that bag of hers. First came a small desk lamp, then an extension cord, a thick ream of paper, a pencil box that rattled pleasantly as she plopped it down on the desk, and a little notebook.

When she was done, Belle stood back and let her eyes sweep over each and every item, her lips moving as if she was summing everything up, checking to make sure everything was there.

“Are you serious? All of this?” he asked, brow furrowed in concern.

“I wasn’t using any of it,” she muttered with a shrug. “Why not?”

“But… those blankets. Won’t you need those yourself? Nights are getting colder.”

“Which is why you’re taking them. I have plenty more.”

“I don’t get cold.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look of pure skepticism that would send a roaring bear back into its cave mumbling timid apologies and made him clutch the blankets tighter to his chest.

“You need nice things, and blankets are nice. You’re taking them. I’m going to get you a little radio and some headphones, too.”

“No, Belle. You’re very kind, but I don’t want you spending money on me,” he said sternly, shaking his head and putting the blankets and the pillow down on the floor next to his desk.

“No arguing after midnight,” she sighed, and he wasn’t sure whether she was telling him, or herself. He nodded anyway. Seemed like a good rule. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I don’t like the thought of you being up here while I wouldn’t mind…”

Another great big sigh, and she looked incredibly tired now. The pitiful state of his attic room hadn’t been keeping her up, had it? She looked at him, gave him a small smile and blinked once, slow, like a cat.

“Never mind.”

Or the pitiful state of him in general.

“Thank you.”

Her smile grew brighter and he felt his own lips respond in kind. She was beautiful. Inside and out, which was a terrible cliché. With her sleepy eyes and her messy hair, on her bare feet and in her pajamas standing in his dusty self-imposed cell, all he wanted was to gather her up and hold her, have her curl into his embrace and see if he couldn’t try to fall asleep with her on those stupid, thoughtful blankets of hers.

All of her, everything about her called to him, and he was weak and empty. He didn’t know what she was offering or why, but he wasn’t strong enough to refuse it. Not anymore. He wanted to take all of it. Everything she offered. Her company, her hand, her goodnight kiss, her fingers in his hair, her soft thighs for a pillow, her jokes and her smiles, her strange lingering looks, her blushes and her shy glances, her conversation like a pleasant babbling brook that somehow always led to a thunderous waterfall crashing and roaring down into a pool of unfathomable depths.

She took a deep breath, looked down at her feet and then back up at his face again to softly say, “There’s just one more thing I’ve been wanting to ask.”

He simply nodded. All the fight had gone out of him. All resistance had melted away under her sun. Her sea had washed over the vestiges of his arrogant little sand castle and there was nothing left for him to do but scramble for his useless metaphors to try and make sense of it all. Whatever she asked of him now, he wouldn’t deny her. He couldn’t. Not anymore. Everything she said and did had only served to make him feel _better_.

“I was thinking we should go get you some books from the library tomorrow,” she said, nearly tripping over her words in her hurry to get them out before he could tell her no.

“Alright.”

“I know you’re weird about being out in public with me, but tomorrow’s Sunday and the library is closed, so you won’t have to hide, and- … What?”

She looked as if he’d spoken in tongues, her brow furrowed and her mouth a little bit open. It made him want to laugh.

“Alright,” he repeated, smiling this time. “I’d like that.”

“Oh.”

Her mouth was still rounded and the lines in her forehead were smoothed away, and yet it took her a few more seconds of complete bafflement before she realized that this was something to smile about. Expecting him to put up a fight, was she? After she’d dismantled his defenses and melted them down? No. No more useless scraps and tussles. This was his unconditional surrender.

“Great! Two PM alright?” she chirped, her grin so big it almost looked a little painful. He felt some strange warm thing in his belly glow in response to the sight of her and it was damn near enough to make him panic, because that hadn’t happened before. That’s not something he’d ever felt. Well, not since his death. And maybe even long before that. What was happening?

“I think I can just about squeeze that into my schedule, yes,” he managed.

“Right,” she giggled, her hand flying up into her hair to scratch her head almost nervously. “Yeah. Okay. Two it is.”

He was going to try to make her laugh more from now on. He loved that sound.

“So… I guess I’ll be going, then,” Belle said, wrapping her arms around her chest and rocking up and down on the balls of her feet. Was she cold again? Better not ask. Last time he did that, she’d almost… well.

“Be careful,” he called after her as she made her way down the ladder.

Once she was down there, she smiled, waved and whispered, “I’m pushing up the ladder, now. Good night, Rumple.”

“Good night.”

When the hatch closed and he was alone again in his familiar silence, he couldn’t help but think back to the gathering storm, the vast mass of shadowy grey. It was still there, even though he’d made the choice to put down his sword and kick it into a corner. And it was staring accusatory daggers into his back, now, because he’d turned away.

But actually, the key to this mess was simple. So obvious. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

There was pain at the end of the path down which he was following her, yes; but perhaps she didn’t have to get hurt. He could let her play until she grew tired of him, or until someone whose bones were still warm came along and earned her affections, or until her book started flying off the shelves and the entire world opened up to her. And when the curtains fell on their strange, ill-fated friendship, she would happily start a new chapter in her life that had no place for dead men, and she’d know he was in her way. She’d want him gone, and he would leave. And it would hurt him. He would miss her. Perhaps she would miss him, too, for a little while. But it wouldn’t hurt her the way it would him, and that was the only way in which this could end relatively well. Wasn’t it?

Until then, he would take what she gave and give what she wanted.

He’d always been good at finding excuses to do the bad thing.

He sighed and sat down at his desk, now filled with things that weren’t his. More paper than he could ever hope to fill with his pointless sketches - he’d wear down his pencils, first. But perhaps not anymore, he thought to himself as he opened that big blue and white striped pencil box she’d left him and saw what was inside. Colored pencils, and regular ones, too. An eraser. Some pens he’d never seen before. He smiled. Well. That was his night sorted, then.

Belle. Belle French. With her books and her stories and her blankets. He eyed them from the corner of his eye. Perhaps it was a little drafty in here. Perhaps he ought to just drape one over his legs.

…

There was something about an empty library that made Belle feel ageless and powerful. With no-one else there, she could walk through the aisles and run her finger over the spines of each and every book and know that all of these stories could be hers in some way. Endless potential, countless promises of quiet days and nights spent in other worlds.

And sharing that with Rumple made her feel strangely excited.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a closed library before,” he said, his voice soft and deep in a sort of reverent tone that made her smile. He understood, didn’t he? “It feels… special, somehow.”

The doors fell shut behind them, and Belle switched on the lights. She placed her bag and the keys on the reception desk and joined him at the bookcase he was examining. Tourist guides.

“Planning a trip?” she teased.

“Oh ha ha,” he replied grimly, forgetting to hide away his amused smirk to get the full effect. “Mock the ghost, why don’t you.”

“Thanks! I will,” she replied with a wink.

Yes, a wink. Yesterday evening was not the time for her stupendously obvious flirting, but today Rumple had shown up in her apartment with a deep, resonant “Boo!” and had set the tone for the rest of the day. So today would consist of books, her manuscript, dumb jokes, some playful teasing, and if she was feeling particularly brave in the moment: flirting. The way his smirk widened just a bit when she’d winked at him just then was all the encouragement she needed.

Belle left him wandering from shelf to shelf, bookcase to bookcase, and sat down at one of the reading tables. She pulled out her laptop from her bag and for a moment there worried that the start-up sound would come blasting through the speakers until she realized that it was just the two of them in here and it wouldn’t matter. Turned out she’d muted the sound, anyway. Plus, she was the librarian. No-one shushed the librarian.

Rumple looked rather handsome and proud with his hands clasped behind his back and his chin up as he read the names on top shelves, so Belle allowed herself to stare and enjoy the view until he disappeared behind a bookcase in the back of the library and out of her sight. With a sigh, she opened up her text file and scrolled down, up, and down again. She still liked her story, but it was just a little bit intimidating to see that cursor blink after so many days of ignoring it.

But she knew what was going to happen, next. Her little girl would head inside the closet, tired of waiting for the monster to come out. She’d bring a little flashlight or a lantern perhaps, but once she was deep inside - this is, of course, not just a closet but some sort of portal to the monster’s world - she would realize that her little light wasn’t bright enough to guide the way. Just as she thought she was lost forever, she would feel a soft, furry hand take hers very gently and guide her back to the closet door. She wouldn’t learn her lesson just like that, though. No. That’s not where the story would end.

Belle knew exactly what it would look like, and she sort of wanted to ask Rumple to sketch it out for her, but she wasn’t sure if he was still interested at all. Maybe if he asked how her story was going, she could bring it up.

She typed a few words and wished they would lead to sentences and paragraphs, and they actually did for a little while. Rumple had joined her at the table with a few books, taking the chair opposite her. Belle smiled at him over the screen. He smiled back and then dove straight into Balzac, and she wondered if it would be completely over the top for her to just sort of ‘accidentally’ brush her foot against his leg under the table as she crossed one leg over the other.

Yes. Yes, Belle. That would be well over the top. Well spotted. Now _don’t_.

But it did make her wonder. He had his elbow on the table and his fingers in his hair, his hand supporting his head. He clearly had to be solid to turn the pages, but was the rest of him? Could he pick and choose parts of his body? That’d be neat. Weird… but neat.

They hadn’t spoken about it, but Belle knew they’d silently acknowledged the fact that he could stay solid and visible for much longer, now. What had stuck with her all through the night (it was difficult to fall asleep after all of that) was the fact that she had him on her lap for just over an hour, and he’d barely faded. A little bit, sure, but really not that much at all. More importantly; she’d had her hands on him throughout. She’d actually been a little scared that if she stopped running her fingers through his hair - which was incredibly soft, by the way - he would stop being solid. Or worse; wake up from his direly needed nap.

Which was just a great excuse to keep petting him, really.

“You’re staring,” he pointed out, giving her a quick, questioning glance.

“Oh, I know. I was just thinking you look like you’d make a good librarian,” Belle replied. She bit down on her lip to keep her grin in check.

“Would I, now?” he asked, his eyebrows knitted together, a smirk dancing at the corners of his mouth.

“Mhm.”

“Well then,” he paused to clear his throat, “how’s this?”

Belle raised an eyebrow as Rumple straightened himself in his chair, peered at her over his book as if he were wearing reading glasses and gave her a look that she wasn’t quite sure was meant to have the effect on her it did. She swallowed. Her stomach tightened. His grin broke through his mask for just a split second - which didn’t help things much - but he quickly plastered that dangerous look back on and growled, “Ms. French, I’m afraid I cannot tolerate these wine stains on the Proust any longer.”

She giggled and rolled her eyes, and his look softened.

“How was that? Is that how you do it?” he asked, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest. His smirk was gorgeous; a little flash of teeth in one corner of his mouth, his deep dark eyes boldly fixed to hers. She felt a little bit of bravery bubble up. A bit of playfulness. A desire to knock him down a peg.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I tend to go for stern rather than seductive.”

“Oh God!” he laughed, burying his face in his hands. Victory. Belle chuckled low and mirrored his earlier posture, arms folded over her chest, leaning back in her chair.

“Interesting technique, though,” she added with a giggle. She rather adored the sight of him hunched over and laughing silently into his hands, his shoulders shaking. Silly man, thinking he could out-flirt a 21st century woman.

Suddenly, Belle heard the familiar sound of the library doors opening. Shit. She hadn’t locked them. She whispered an urgent, “Rumple. Company,” and watched him disappear in front of her eyes with a surprised look.

“I’m afraid we’re closed!” she called out, nearly toppling her chair in her hurry to get up. She hurried over to the desk to find someone standing and waiting, carrying a book in his hands. A man in his mid forties with a raincoat and a pair of sunglasses perched on his head who looked vaguely familiar.

“Oh! Sorry. I was just passing and I saw the lights on,” he said, “and I figured I might as well drop this off. I had it in the car, anyway. Should I come back some other time?”

Oh, of course he looked familiar. He’d borrowed a book. Of course. Made sense.

“It’s alright. Just this once. I can make an exception,” she said, stepping behind the desk. “Don’t tell anyone, though,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Promise. Thank you.”

She took his membership card from him but damn near dropped it when she saw a book just float right off the shelf and hover in mid-air. _Rumple_. What was he up to?

“Something wrong with the card?”

“Hm? Oh! N-no sir, no. Everything’s uh, everything’s fine,” she stammered, willing the damn scanner to finally beep. Great time for the bloody thing to start crapping out on her, really.

Behind the man’s back, the book flew about, the two covers flapping like a set of wings on a bird. High, though. How was he making that book float so high? Belle only just managed to stifle a giggle but couldn’t help the giant grin Rumple’s antics had conjured up. She probably looked insane, but as long as that man was looking at her and not at the flying book right behind him, Belle didn’t care what he thought. Finally, the scanner beeped. She handed the card back with shaky fingers and opened the book so she could find he code and scan it next.

But the man must have heard the pages rustle behind him and turned around, and for a heart-stopping second, Belle thought she would either have to start calling an ambulance for this poor guy’s impending heart attack or make up some sort of story about the library being haunted, which a man bringing back The Da Vinci Code would be gullible enough to _sort of_ believe, but also smug enough to want to dismiss anyway.

Rumple had just dropped the book, right in front of his nose. Belle cringed as the hardcover hit the wooden floor with a hollow thud.

“What the hell was that?” he cried out. Belle quickly scanned his book with shaking hands and thanked whatever deities may have been in attendance that day that Rumple had had the good sense to just drop it. A falling book was much easier to explain away than a hovering book.

“Oh, yeah, we need to get that book case fixed. The shelf’s a bit crooked and sometimes a book will just slide right off.”

“That’s weird,” the man mumbled, picking up the book and giving it a skeptical look. He handed it to Belle, then walked over to the bookcase to inspect it.

“Yeah, you can’t really tell cause the floor is just the teensiest bit uneven, too.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. Sort of… almost balances each other out. Almost.”

God, why wasn’t he leaving already? Was he going to fix the damn thing himself? If he didn’t leave soon, she would probably come up with an even more ridiculous story, so he needed to leave, and he needed to leave right now.

“Yeah. Get that checked out. Might fall on a kid or something.”

“Very true, sir. Will do. Have a nice day.”

“You too. And thanks for making an exception.”

“No problem.”

When the doors fell shut behind him, Belle collapsed to the desk with the biggest sigh she had ever managed in her entire life. Oh God.

“Oops,” she heard him say.

Oops? Seriously? Belle moved from behind the desk to the library doors and locked them, leaving the key in the door. She flicked off one of the light switches, turning off half of the overhead lights. Much darker. Much better. Much less obvious from the outside, she hoped.

“Oops, he says,” Belle muttered, trying not to giggle. “Nearly smacked some guy in the head with an atlas. _Oops_.”

She walked with strong determined steps to where she thought Rumple had been standing and looked around for the telltale whitish blur of his body beginning to take form.

“Well he’s gone now! You can come on out, you absolute…” Belle spun around in a mild panic for some sort of harmless insult to hurl his way - wherever that was - until her eyes landed something the cleaning crew had left behind, and decided on: “ _broomstick!_ ”

“Broomstick?” he laughed. But where did his voice come from? It sounded like it came from somewhere behind her, but behind her were the technology bookcases, and…

“Where are you?”

“Up here.”

Up… here? Was he serious? Belle turned around, took a few steps back, looked up and saw Rumple smirking down at her, looking the smuggest she’d ever seen him. He was actually sitting on top of the bookcase, quirking an eyebrow at her, looking for all the world like a delighted little boy who’d found a clever new way to cause mischief, and it definitely did explain why he’d managed to get that book to float so high.

It seemed like he was in as playful a mood as she was. A bit like when he’d turned invisible and did the washing up for her entertainment. Only he’d ramped it up a bit, hadn’t he? Jesus Christ. God, she wanted to pull him down from there and… and…

She swallowed down that train of thought before it could leave the station and blurted, “Are you kidding me?” placing her hands on her waist. “How did you get up there?”

“I’m a ghost,” he mumbled with a shrug, as if that explained it. Which, actually, it sort of did, Belle had to admit to herself.

“You nearly got me in so much trouble!”

“I think you handled it rather well,” he teased, that smirk of his making her want to…

Oh. Oh dear.

Something inside of her had snapped. A tear in the dam letting out a slow trickle of something that was either freezing cold or piping hot - too much of _something_ at least - filling up her belly and coursing through her veins to make her fingers twitch and grasp uselessly, nervously at the hem of her shirt. She needed to touch him. She was filled with such violent affection for this ridiculous, impossible man and his beautiful, smug face and she needed to touch him right now or she’d…

Well, she’d live, but still her fingers itched to touch him, and the look on his face was just absolutely daring her to, and she needed to before the whirlwind of urgency twisted up her insides completely and made her do something worse than touch him - _confess_.

“Right, that’s it,” said Belle, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking the way her hands were. “Come on, you.”

His smirk wavered a bit and he blinked at her a few times. Wasn’t expecting that, was he?

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Come on.”

She began to walk deeper into the library, and when she glanced over her shoulder she saw that she had Rumple in tow. No idea how he got down from there. Floated, probably. If she asked, he’d say, “Ghost.” Didn’t matter. She willed her restless legs to slow their nervous pace so Rumple could catch up.

“Are you putting me in the naughty corner?” he asked, his voice sounding just a little bit unsure.

“I ought to! But no. Come on.”

She led him to the darkest, most neglected aisle in the library she could find, and stopped. No-one in this town really cared much for comparative religion. The maintenance crew never bothered checking the overhead lamps very often and there were no windows here in this corner of the library.

What now? Why had she brought him here? He seemed to be wondering the same thing, his beautiful eyes seeking hers for a clue, his brow creased with a hint of worry that made her heart ache. She heard her own voice softly say “Come closer,” and then she remembered why.

He inched a little nearer. Belle reached out slowly, giving him time to adjust and solidify if he needed to, and touched his hair. It was soft against her skin, same as she remembered it from the night before. She let her fingertips slide through, then coiled a lock of it around her finger. Belle tore her eyes away from where those strangely translucent strands of hair wrapped around her fingers, flashed Rumple a small, narrow-eyed smirk to warn him and gave that lock of hair a gentle, experimental _tug_. He frowned, but his eyes were full of laughter, and Belle bit her lip so as not to giggle.

“What was that for?”

“Just curious.”

She started running the very tips of her fingers through his hair again. If he thought this was strange, he wasn’t showing it. He looked curious, sure, but his eyes didn’t shy away from hers, like she thought they would. When she pulled her hand back, he turned his head just a little bit so she brushed past his cheek. And that was encouraging. Maybe a little too encouraging.

And now she felt a bit silly, standing there touching him for no good reason. Why had she been thinking that he was clueless? For him to step back every time she stepped forward and brush off her clumsy come-ons with such ease, he needed to be aware of them. He knew. He’d known. She was an idiot. He was so kind.

And it was very difficult to come back from dragging your crush into a dark corner of the library with no explanation and brush it off as some sort of joke, wasn’t it?

There was no going back, now.

Rumple reached out slowly, as if she was the one who could make herself untouchable, and brushed his knuckles against her hair. Softly. She was so incredibly glad she’d worn it down that day. A light pressure, a soothing caress all the way from the top of her head, past her cheek and further down until he reached the very tips of her hair, took a few locks between his fingers and gently pulled it over her shoulder. She tried to smile at him, but she felt her lips tremble, so she didn’t.

When he pulled back his hand, Belle turned her head and let her lips brush against his wrist for just a moment. He faltered, glanced from his wrist to her eyes, and she saw him swallow nervously.

Too much?

Yeah. Too much. But not enough.

He was just following her lead. He was letting her pull him deep into the woods, thorns scratching her arms as she pushed bramble bushes to the side for him, stepping over fallen branches with sharp ends, owls high up in the trees warning them in their hollow voices to turn back and save themselves.

Except the nearest trees were dead ones filled with cautionary tales Belle knew both of them had read over and over. Don’t stray from the path. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t mess with the other side. Don’t fall in love. But if characters in stories and fairy tales took good advice when they heard it, there would be no stories to speak of - and what was the point of life if not to live your own story to the fullest? Why not give herself over to the narrative in all its terrifying intensity?

With her heart pounding wildly in her chest, Belle carefully brushed her fingertips against his lips. They were soft. When she gathered the courage to look up, Belle found him staring right back. Dark. Kind. He knew what she wanted. It made her feel warm all over. She moved a little closer still, tilted her head up just a little bit, and when his eyes fluttered to her mouth, that was it. The knot in her stomach dissolved. Her eyes slid shut and she fit their lips together and gently, softly kissed his bottom lip like she’d been wanting to do for what felt like an eternity. Her knees were weak, but she managed. Her heart was racing, but it was alright. It had to be racing. How could it not?

Until he pulled away and took a step back, making her feel hollow inside all of the sudden. No. No, not that strange feeling in her stomach again. Not that sadness. Rumple looked afraid, and it hurt. Her body followed his, and she heard own her voice whisper or whimper - she couldn’t possibly tell - as she draped her arms around his neck and sought out his lips again. With their lips together, it didn’t hurt.

Don’t pull back. Just don’t pull back. Just keep kissing. Over and over and over again. Don’t leave room for words. Kiss them all back into his mouth.

And then he was kissing her the way she’d hoped he would, moving against her, capturing her lips. His arms wrapped themselves around her, _finally_ , and pulled her close against his chest, and it was all she wanted.

And he was warm, now. It wasn’t just her. He really had gotten warmer, almost feverish. She only cracked her eyes open because she thought the library lights had turned themselves on again, but it was him. Him and the light above them, flickering in unison - his a soft glow like a failing nightlight by the door, the lamp buzzing until she heard the telltale crackle and fizzle of it failing.

Huh.

… Whatever. So he glowed, now. Big deal. Eyes shut. Keep kissing.

She hadn’t really noticed how big his hands were until she felt them all over her back, moving up, down, and at her sides. It felt as if they could fit around her waist completely. His nose slid against hers as they broke apart and tilted their faces together in a different angle for yet another kiss. How many was that, now? Didn’t matter, it would never be enough, anyway.

“Belle,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, hot against her lips, “this isn’t good. This can’t-”

“Could you maybe pretend for a bit, please?” she murmured, letting her lips move against his as she spoke. “I don’t know about you, but I’m… _really_ not done here.”

The silence would have been terrifying had his eyes not been full of something that made her entire body heat up in response. She swallowed and waited patiently, hoped he could see the need in her eyes. Kisses now. Reality later.

“Yeah,” was his breathless response before he swooped in and claimed her lips, and if he hadn’t been kissing her senseless right then, she would have been ashamed of the sound she made. His arms around her were perfect, their kisses wet now, her back pushed up against the classical religion section, and he was so, so warm.

When they broke apart that time, Belle didn’t give him a chance to speak, blurting, “Can we go home and do that some more?”

“Yes. Please.”

Her heart jumped in her chest. Perfect. She kissed his soft lips again. That faint glow was gone. She’d bring that up later, as soon as her lips hurt too much for her to even consider another kiss. Just a little while longer. Just a few more hours of this. Belle wanted to get him home before he changed his mind and crawled back into his head to leave her cold and on her own again.

She gathered her stuff, shoving everything into her bag, switched off the lights, grabbed his hand, led him out into the chilly autumn evening once he’d made himself invisible and began the walk home.

She didn’t even have to ask him. He held on tight.


	11. Mirror Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle's new favorite hobby is kissing her ghost and ignoring that alarm bell going off in the distance. And she's getting really good at both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3

**Weeks earlier**

He didn’t know why he was here at all, but he rather liked this building, and he didn’t doubt for a second that there were worse places to haunt. It was mostly quiet during the day, apart from the occasional child’s giggles when school let out, and busy footsteps and pleasant neighborly conversation in the hallways. At night, it was almost always peaceful. Except when one of the younger tenants got home fairly sloshed late at night, failed to fit the key in the lock in the first two or twenty tries and cursed rather a lot louder than they may have intended to.

Well, ‘one of the younger tenants’ was really just that young writer in the apartment quite near his attic hatch, to be honest, and he didn’t mind her occasional nocturnal adventures at all. In fact, he rather liked those late night onslaughts of crassly muttered _bloody hells_ and the always amusing _fuck’s sakes_. Sometimes there’d be a _“Bloody hell, get your shit together, Belle, fuck’s sake.”_ \- his personal favorite - and he would have to bite down on his tongue to keep from laughing. The accent lent itself rather well to language like that, and to hear it coming from someone so tiny and harmless-looking was just absolutely delightful.

But mostly, it was quiet. He got a lot of reading done that way. A lot of aimless wandering, as well. Now that the weight of whatever memories he had had before was curiously missing, his days weren’t so bad. Books, television, idle observation, a bit of useless doodling - but not often. It was difficult to keep track of time, but it didn’t matter. He never did remember his name, but that didn’t matter either.

There were days where he did nothing but read. Days where he drew the same things over and over again. And then there were days where all he wanted was to just see how everyone was doing. Not that he cared much. It’s just that there was very little else to do, and he was running out of books to read. He didn’t want to borrow one of the Australian’s, because he’d actually catch her _reading_ them, as opposed to many of the other tenants who never seemed to get round to them.

So he would make the rounds in the evenings, sometimes. Pop into a random apartment and perhaps catch a movie or a TV show if it wasn’t too bombastic a display of loud sounds and flashing lights. He’d stick around and listen for a bit if the conversations seemed interesting. And all in all, it was easier, now, this strange form of purgatory. There was no past to think of, and no future to consider. Just seconds ticking away, day after day. No wants, no regrets.

But one evening in particular was just a little bit less peaceful than the others. As he sat in his attic and tried to read as slow as he possibly could, he began to grow aware of a deep, loud voice he hadn’t heard in a while. It didn’t sound all too pleasant, either. He tried to focus on the words on the page, but that voice only grew louder, and something felt wrong, somehow, so he abandoned his book and moved through the attic floor.

It was coming from this floor. A loud, booming voice, then nothing for a few moments. Then that same voice in a calmer tone, immediately followed by more shouting. It seemed to be coming from young Belle French’s apartment (he’d had a sneaky look at her unopened mail to figure out her name) and he absolutely couldn’t stop himself from moving through the wall and into her room to make sure that she was alright.

It was that Gaston lad, gesticulating and shouting and pleading for whatever reason. He hadn’t seen him in a while. And there was the wee Australian, looking fierce and determined, her chin up and her arms folded. What was this about?

“Breaking up isn’t the answer, babe. We’ve both got some issues we need to work on, but -”

“First of all, you can go work on yours somewhere else. Secondly, have you got an actual complaint about me, or are you just looking to blame me for this?”

Oh. Oh dear. Had he burst in on a break-up? Should he do the polite thing and leave them to their exchange of parting words? He really ought to…

“We never do anything fun anymore! You just sit there and type and bitch and moan about having to write things you don’t like to write. Just fucking stop writing, then! Get a real job so we can go out on the weekend like normal people!”

“A real job? I have two!”

“Bullshit, babe, come on. Sitting around in that dusty old library for like, three days a week? Writing crap about puppies or memes or eleven fucking uses for Nutella or what the fuck ever?”

“It pays the bills.”

“Barely. I told you, if we moved in -”

“Do you really think that idea appeals to me at the moment? We broke up. We’re not getting back together. I need you to leave now so I can get back to writing.”

He’d always thought them an odd couple, but the last time he saw those two together, they seemed to be doing alright. Quiet, sure - very little conversation. But back then, he thought that perhaps the lass had a thing for less… complicated men. To each their own and all. But perhaps not?

The young man sighed and let his shoulder hang. Good. He really did need to tone it down. All that shouting and cursing at someone you’re supposed to cherish was completely out of order.

“Belle, babe,” he cooed, stepping forwards with his arms open as if for a hug, “I love you, but don’t you think it’s time to admit you’re never going to get anything published?”

Her lip trembled. Her bright blue eyes widened. He’d forgotten what anger felt like, but oh - there it was again. That dark, horned beast with glowing red eyes staring holes right through his back, making some very compelling arguments for shoving this human waste bin of a boy face first into a wall and then forcibly dragging him out of her apartment.

But it seemed the beast had not just been whispering those suggestions to him.

“Get out,” she said. Stern but calm. Oh, the look on this oaf’s face as he sputtered an outraged, “W-what?”

Didn’t expect her to bite back, obviously. Good. Then this would definitely make an impression.

“I’m serious, Gaston,” she insisted. Was it strange to feel a certain sense of pride in this situation? Was it odd to be proud of what was essentially a stranger?

“Baby, come on.”

“Don’t baby me. We broke up weeks ago.”

That certainly explained the fellow’s recent absence, and made that anger boil hotter still. What the hell was this idiot still doing here if she’d ended things weeks ago?

“ _You_ broke up with _me_. I didn’t want this.”

“I don’t care what you want. You need to leave right now.”

“Why did you even let me in if you were just going to kick me out again?”

“Oh my God, Gaston, seriously? Because you asked to come pick up your crap! You’ve got your crap, now leave.”

The poor sod’s brain was probably coming dangerously close to overheating. She was fighting back, standing up for herself, and he hadn’t seen it coming. Stunned silence. For a few seconds, at least.

“Don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

Would it be possible for him to punch this disrespectful fool’s lights out, or was he too weak for that? Probably. He hadn’t really lifted anything heavy for a long time, and that boy’s skull was incredibly fucking thick by the sound and looks of him.

“Apparently, I do. Get out.”

“No!” he boomed, prompting her to wrap her arms around herself in an instinctive defensive reaction. How could he do that? How could he watch her cringe like that and not lose that harsh edge in his eyes?

“I’m gonna go take a leak and then we’re going to talk this out, babe!”

Charming.

“There’s nothing to talk about! And stop calling me that!”

“Yes there fucking is! _Babe!_ ”

Right. That was more than enough from that semi-articulate hominid. He had to do something. For years and years, he hadn’t made himself known in any way, to anyone. He didn’t interfere and he didn’t intervene. But this raging imbecile was on track to making his favorite tenant’s life a living hell, and he couldn’t just stand idly by while he roared and raged as if he had _the right_.

So he followed him into the bathroom, locked the door, turned on every tap and swept every bottle he could find (that wouldn’t break) to the floor. By this point, the idiot was flailing about in complete confusion, but hadn’t even considered running for his life yet. It was only when he kindly suggested he get the fuck out quite near his ear that panic seemed to set in, and he began to rattle the door handle uselessly.

Absolute half-brain. Wasn’t even checking the lock. That was fine by him, though. Gave him some time to write ‘leave’ in the condensation on the mirror, even though the chances that he would turn around and read it (could the poor sap read?) were rather slim.

He could just about hear Ms. French’s voice over the racket of that door handle jiggling violently, but he couldn’t make out the words. He hoped she wasn’t too disturbed. He hadn’t actually… given it that much thought, had he? He just wanted the fucker out, that’s what he wanted. Just out. Away from her, unless she asked him to stay after all. Which clearly, she wasn’t planning on doing.

The moment the door finally burst open, he set to work on putting everything back where he found it, closing the taps first of all. He’d knocked rather a lot of shampoo bottles to the floor, and for a moment there, he was terrified that she would come check on the state of her bathroom and find her conditioner floating in mid-air.

“Gaston, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting out of here. Where’s my stuff?”

“In that box by the door. What did you do to my bathroom?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Have a nice life.”

He just needed to wipe out that helpful message, and everything would be fine. She wouldn’t know. She might be a little bit confused as to what on earth that ruckus had been, but with a little luck she’d think that fellow of hers had lost the plot completely and uselessly banged a few bottles on the counter for dramatic effect.

But before he could wipe away the letters, her head came peeking round the corner, frowning and confused. And he was still there, standing perfectly still in front of her mirror. This was terrifying somehow, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. He hadn’t stood this close to anyone in a long time.

This was odd, to look into a mirror and just see her frowning face as if this were a movie and he was a cleverly placed camera. So very odd. She squinted at the letters in a way that made it seem like she was staring right at him, and if he’d had a heart, it would have been beating a hole through his chest right now.

But she couldn’t see him. What would she do if she could? Would she scream? Pack her bags and move out in an instant? Throw something at that mirror, or would she turn around and punch him right in the face? Not that he was going to show himself. No. Never. Not ever. There was just her in that mirror, and that’s how it should be. No place for him there.

She wiped away those letters and left him alone in her bathroom, clicking off the light and taking away this tiny shred of temptation to make himself the slightest bit visible and remember what he looked like. Better not. He looked awful, probably. Ghastly. Unnatural. No, this darkness was good, and mirrors were not. It didn’t matter, anyway. What he looked like. No-one would ever have to see.

He hoped Gaston would have to walk home through the pouring rain. A touch of pneumonia was the least he deserved. He ought to leave, really. Let her get her bearings. Make sense of everything that just happened. But perhaps…

Perhaps it would be alright if he stayed for a little while, in a corner of the room, well out of her way - just in case that boy came back in anger and he needed to chase him out again. He wouldn’t even look at her, however tempting those eyes were. He would just stare out of the window, wait for her to go to bed, and leave.

Just to be safe. Just for tonight.

…

Rumple held her hand all the way from the library to the apartment and it filled Belle with an overwhelming sense of hope, and something else a little more exciting. Something she shouldn’t be thinking about right now.

Her door clicked shut, the sound of it louder than she remembered. Belle felt her heart somewhere down in her belly, beating strong. It wasn’t there, of course - she was being ridiculous - but it did feel that way. She turned around to find Rumple chewing his lip, staring at her bookcase but not really looking. She slipped out of her heels, took off her coat and hung it on the coat stand for once. Her hands were shaking. Her breath was shallow. She wasn’t ready to talk, yet, and neither was he - he’d have made some sort of jokingly patronizing comment about her finally using that coat stand by now if he was.

She walked up to him, stockinged feet silent on the hardwood floor. Carefully, as if she was scared he’d bolt, she put her hand on his shoulder, let it slide down his arm until she could take his hand in hers and guide him to the sofa. She curled up her legs under her. He sat down and looked nowhere near her.

“Rumple?”

He blinked, let his tongue flit out over his lip for a split second, then turned to face her. She couldn’t read him. Couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Have you changed your mind?” she asked softly. “Cause that’s okay. We can just play Scrabble, or whatever. Watch TV.”

He didn’t nod. Didn’t shake his head. Didn’t say anything. For a moment, Belle worried he hadn’t heard her, and that he’d gotten unanchored somehow; assailed by waves of unfiltered reality as he’d described it to her that night they watched the cars pass by, and that her words couldn’t reach him over the din. But then his dark eyes looked at her lips, and he leaned in slow. Her belly burning, Belle closed the distance without a second thought and let his lips capture hers. Softly, at first; just touching so unbearably _barely_ it was almost torturous.

But then she felt his hand cup the back of her head, and his lips grew more insistent, warmer against hers, and she wanted desperately to wrap her arms around him and melt into his touch. But no, this wasn’t the time for that. Slow was what they needed. And in the comforts of her apartment, with the initial tidal wave of emotions having washed over them, he was taking the lead, and Belle was savoring every moment of it.

Rumple’s kisses were not what she’d fantasized about - they were better. It was just that she didn’t think he would be so intense. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d expected him to be a bit reticent. Chaste, maybe. Perhaps because Belle didn’t know to what extent he’d been keeping up with the times in that regard. He said he watched television sometimes and onscreen romance was nothing new, but what if he’d only been watching nature documentaries and cartoons? Not that he looked the type to sit in on some kid’s after school TV time, but still…

Perhaps she’d just been a bit naive. The man had been married, for Christ’s sake. Maybe he’d had some girlfriends, too. Or boyfriends. Whatever. Who knew? God, and who cared? He was so good at this. She’d never kissed like this before.

This was a lazy, slow, warm beyond belief type of kissing that somehow felt incredibly deep, even though neither of them had even dared deepen it so far. He would kiss her, and it would lasts long, lovely seconds. Then he would pull away just the tiniest bit, change angles and kiss her again. Over and over and over. His fingertips were at her cheeks, her jaw, her neck; conjuring up goosebumps all over. Sometimes he would pull back a bit too far for Belle’s liking, and she almost whimpered for the loss of contact, like a demanding puppy, but then she would open her eyes and find him looking at her with such adoration she was almost paralyzed in his gaze. And then the spell broke and she’d notice his lips again, and she would swoop in and it would start all over. They sat there for the longest time, just kissing, and Belle didn’t want to stop.

But she felt the warmth build up to a heat, and it was too soon for any of that. Much too soon. She needed to stop for a while and take a break from his lips before the heat sank lower and tempted her to turn that dial she really oughtn’t. The one that went from off to way the fuck on with very little warning. The one no man born in the 19th century would be even remotely able to handle.

So she splayed her hands against his chest and gently pushed until he got the hint and sank down into the cushioning, so she could snuggle up and nestle herself in his arm with her head on his shoulder. They had to tangle their legs a little bit in order to fit, but that was just fine by Belle. She had one arm thrown over his chest, and his was draped over her waist, and it was so perfect Belle couldn’t stop smiling. Outside the wind was blowing and the sun was setting. Looked like rain. Didn’t matter, because in here, she was cuddled up with someone she liked so much the very thought of him filled her with warmth and light.

And the world hadn’t stopped turning. The sky hadn’t cracked open in apocalyptic anger. No earthquakes, no towering infernos, no flood, no end of the world. They’d kissed, and everything was fine. Belle hadn’t expected any of that, of course, but she suspected that Rumple had. That night he left her, he left because he didn’t think he belonged here. As if he felt that it was his solemn duty to stop himself from connecting with his world, and to pretend he wasn’t here at all.

It puzzled Belle. She knew he felt like an intruder, and she understood that in a certain sense, but she didn’t _really_ understand. How could he possibly still think there was no place for him here when they fit together perfectly like this? Wasn’t he feeling as wonderful as she was? He cared for her, didn’t he? It was obvious that he did; he didn’t kiss her like a man who didn’t care. But there was a sadness about him, still. The way he looked at her after she’d kissed him in the library was heartrending.

“Can I ask you something a little strange?”

His voice was deep, soft, and deliciously close to her ear. It’d be nice not to be the one with the weird questions for once.

“Sure. Of course. Anything.”

“Do I feel very different?” he asked.

“What do you mean? When we touch?”

“Yes. Compared to…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t need to. It was an interesting question, and she hadn’t really thought of it that much, but that meant that it couldn’t have felt much different at all, right?

“Not really,” she said, moving the hand on his chest up a bit so she could lightly put her fingertips to his neck. “Just feels like skin. Maybe softer. Or smoother. But you don’t feel very different at all.”

“Oh. ’s Good, I suppose. I was worried it would feel eerie.”

“Not at all eerie. Feels nice,” Belle said, resting her hand on his chest again. “But… Well. You did get sort of hot to the touch.”

She could feel him lift his head up, but Belle simply nuzzled hers back into his shoulder to make absolutely sure that he knew this was where she wanted him.

“Hot?”

“Yeah. Well, just really warm. Not too hot or anything. Not painful. In the library, when we first kissed. And you also, uh…”

She had to bring it up some time, right? She only hoped he wouldn’t start freaking out about it. She hadn’t minded. She really, really hadn’t. It was cute, in a sense, even.

“You kind of glowed for a few seconds.”

“What?” he cried, shifting to lie on his side so they faced one another just a bit, making her head slide off his shoulder. Her favorite new pillow, gone. His arm was still draped over her waist, though, so that was okay. This was still good. Except now that she could see his face, she wanted to kiss him all over again.

“Yeah. You glowed. Kinda.”

The look he gave her then was almost comical, but beyond those puzzled puppy eyes and that cutely furrowed brow, Belle could read genuine concern, so she forced down her smile and explained in as calm and soothing a voice she could muster, “We were kissing, and I had my eyes closed, and I thought the lights had turned on again but when I opened my eyes, I saw that it was you.”

He just stared at her, wide-eyed and unblinking, his eyebrows knitting ever closer together, letting Belle know that he wasn’t exactly taking this news very well. So she reached up and cupped his face in her hand, tried to stroke his worry away with her thumb brushing gently against his cheek. His eyes softened, thankfully, but the worry lines were still there.

“You could barely see it! It was really faint! Wouldn’t have noticed it in broad daylight, I don’t think.”

“But… I glowed?”

“Yeah. And I think it had something to do with the lamp above us cause it flickered at the same time. An electrical thing, maybe?”

He turned his head and stared up at the ceiling, sighing a deep sigh that didn’t sound very relaxed to Belle at all. Her hand fell from his face, so she splayed it against his chest again. She couldn’t help it. She’d been wanting to touch him freely like this for so long, and now that he was letting her, she didn’t want to let go.

“Has that happened before?” she tried, tracing non-existent patterns on his shirt with her fingers.

“No. I don’t think so. God, I’m so sorry, Belle.”

“Sorry? Why?”

“Because that’s not normal,” he explained, turning to face her again. “It must have been unsettling.”

“If anything, I thought it was charming.”

“Really?” he muttered, his head cocked in a quizzical look that made her want to giggle.

“We kissed for like five more minutes after you lit up like a Christmas tree. I didn’t - ” she paused to kiss his jaw, “ - care.”

He didn’t reply, but when she nuzzled her head gently against his, she felt his lips smile against her cheek, and that was more than enough for now.

“Was kinda hoping you’d do it again, actually,” she giggled.

“And did I?”

“Disappointingly, no. Maybe I haven’t been kissing you thoroughly enough.”

He chuckled deep and Belle felt his smile widen into a smirk as he softly said, “I assure you, you have.”

“I promise you, you have no idea,” she lilted.

No, dial it back. Finger off the switch.

“Did you mean for that to sound vaguely menacing?” he teased, his tempting lips curling up just a tiny bit. Belle buried her grin in his chest and felt her face heat up. She always thought she had the upper hand in their little moments of teasing banter, but he could strike back at any moment and turn the tables, and she’d feel like a hopeless schoolgirl. She loved that.

His arms tightened around her a bit, pulling her closer, and he murmured, “I thought that was you, actually. The warmth.”

“Nope,” she replied, shaking her head. “Well, not just me.”

“But it was strange, wasn’t it? It wasn’t normal.”

“I don’t care what it was! I like you, Rumple. Who cares about normal? Normal isn’t interesting. _You’re_ endlessly interesting. I could listen to you talk for ages.”

“But why are you so… so _casual_ about this? How could you act like this is just fine? You say you like to listen to me talk, but I don’t have a larynx. Have you ever thought of that? I have a voice, but I don’t have a larynx. That’s insane.”

Oh, things were heading south again. Their blissful snogging session would be a little more short-lived than she’d hoped, because Rumple sounded genuinely worked up over this, even with his arms full of her. Belle took a deep breath and hoped that perhaps she could steer them away from that cliff after all.

“See? That’s interesting! I hadn’t even given that any thought! It’s neat!” she chirped, in all likelihood trying a little bit too hard to sound cheerful.

“It’s unnatural,” he mumbled.

“No it’s not. Just because we don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s -”

“What I don’t understand is how I don’t repulse you.”

“Rumple! Stop!”

In her hurry to scramble up in order to give him her sternest look, she nearly tumbled from the sofa entirely, but he was quick to tighten his hold on her waist and pull her back into his embrace. God, this bloody considerate infuriating self-deprecating sweet _fool_.

“Nothing about you repulses me,” she said, reluctantly disentangling from his limbs and sitting up with her legs crossed. “You have this really messed up and completely unfair idea of yourself. You’re not repulsive! And how could you possibly be unnatural?”

“I’m dead, and I shouldn’t be here,” he muttered, sitting up straight.

“Why shouldn’t you?”

He shrugged instead of answered, and Belle raised a single eyebrow. That answer never came.

“I don’t even have a body.”

“You do have a body,” Belle sighed.

“What’s left of it is not here on this sofa, dearie.”

“Rumple, honestly! What have I been kissing, then?”

He opened his mouth to fire back another reply that never came. So he blinked a few times, shrugged and stared down at his hands. His lovely hair fell down to hide his face like his own personal curtain, and suddenly Belle realized something.

“You haven’t seen your face in a while, have you?” she asked softly, scooting closer to him. No reply. Not even a noncommittal mumble, or a shrug, or a nod. Nothing.

“Rumple,” Belle said, gently resting her hand on his shoulder.

“No.”

“You look normal, you know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “You can see right through me.”

“You’re not all that translucent anymore, and it’s not that strange. It’s never _been_ that strange.”

“Belle,” he said softly, giving her a particularly sad look she never wanted to see again. “You don’t have to try and convince me that I’m normal. I know I’m not.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do. Who cares about normal, anyway? I’m just saying you’re not as different as you think you are.”

“You’re too sweet,” he sighed, shaking his head.

Right, okay, that was it. No more. Absolutely no more of this nonsense. What the hell kind of twisted image did this man have of himself? Belle jumped up from the sofa and held out her hand. Rumple blinked at her in confusion so she raised her eyebrows in expectation and explained, “You. Me. Bathroom mirror. Right now.”

“What?”

“You’re not allowed to be this negative about yourself if you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Belle said, reaching out to grab the hand he wasn’t offering her and giving it a gentle tug. “So come on. Mirror. Now.”

“What if I don’t have a reflection?” he asked, clambering up.

“You’re not a vampire! Cheer up, Louis!”

“Wh-”

“Dumb reference. Never mind. You’re driving me up the wall with this negative nonsense. Come on!”

Rumple’s hand squeezed hers gently. She took that as a good sign, so she led him to the bathroom and clicked on the light, muttering, “I was so comfortable, too.”

But standing next to her own reflection in the mirror was a sight that melted the determined frown from her face and disarmed her entirely - Rumple, not looking in the mirror, but instead, at her. Unsure. Brow furrowed. Lips pressed together in a thin line. And there she was, pushing and pulling at him again, waltzing over his concerns as if they didn’t matter at all, while he wasn’t even fighting back anymore.

Like he said when they’d first left this building together that night; her enthusiasm and his stubbornness just about balanced each other out. But not now. He was all softness and quiet, now, standing there meekly in her storm, his eyes fluttering over her profile with a silent plea for mercy.

She was letting her impatience and her fondness of this man get the better of her. She liked him so incredibly much she couldn’t stand the thought of anyone being so negative about him, but what could she possibly do if that ‘anyone’ was Rumple himself? Now he looked for all the world a lost little boy. This proud, gorgeous man. Lost. Helpless. She felt awful.

“Rumple,” she cooed, moving to stand in front of him. She pulled his arms around her waist and leaned back against his chest just a little bit. He wasn’t looking in the mirror, but that was alright for now. If she could tell him what she saw, and if he just had a little faith in her, maybe he would in a bit.

“You’re handsome. You’ve got these gorgeous kind eyes that are intensely dark, but sometimes they’re almost bright golden in the right light. They’re beautiful. And when you smile - really, _really_ smile - I kinda feel it -” she paused to take his hand and placed it right in the middle of her abdomen, just under her ribs, “- right here.”

It was true. She did. It made her feel like a little girl with a playground crush and she hadn’t ever felt that feeling as strongly as she had with him.

Rumple tried to hide his smile in the crook of her neck, but she’d spotted it before he succeeded, and without fail: there came that strong pull right in the middle of her chest, just beneath her ribs. Even stronger now that his hand was right there, too. It was a little difficult to keep her voice from trembling when she felt his nose ever so slightly nudge her ear, but still Belle could just about manage, “I just see a man, Rumple. That’s what you are.”

He sighed, clenched his eyes shut for a few very long seconds, then looked up and over her shoulder, straight at his own reflection. Belle didn’t mean to hold her breath - didn’t even realize she was doing it - but when Rumple’s eyes met hers in the mirror her breath came shuddering out. She smiled, but it was brief and weak. Nervous. He smiled back, but only to comfort her. Belle could tell the difference.

With his eyes back on his own reflection, Rumple muttered, “I see something that doesn’t belong here.”

Her heart sank. She knew, she really did, but hearing the words come out of his mouth like that was particularly painful. All she could think to do was grab him and try to kiss those thoughts out of his head, but that hadn’t worked before, had it? It just distracted them.

“I know you do,” Belle said. “But I think you’re wrong.”

“I don’t see how I’m wrong,” replied Rumple, his eyes back to hers. Belle placed both hands on his arms, still around her waist.

“I want you here. Isn’t that enough?”

“It should be,” he murmured with a faint nod.

Belle knew it would be naive of her to think that she could magic away his worries just like that. In part, that was because deep down inside, she shared them. But that’s where she kept them - deep down inside, nowhere near daylight, and she didn’t allow them to come in between her lips and his. They were dark fears and a painful truth that had made her feel hollow, lonely and cold on more than one occasion.

But when his nose came nuzzling behind her ear again, Belle hurriedly shoved those grim thoughts right back down into her stomach where they landed like a ton of bricks and made her feel awful for all of two seconds before she closed the lid on the entire business and went back to the matter at hand. Namely, her handsome ghost who hadn’t been kissed nearly enough.

“You’ll come around,” she said, giving him a little nod in the mirror.

“I like your confidence.”

“I like you,” she chimed with a grin.

“Don’t be cute,” he murmured low. His voice was entirely too near her ear for her not to turn around in his embrace and bury her face in the crook of his neck to stifle her giggle. Maybe they could go back to playing and teasing and turn their backs on that gathering storm. If she held back a little and let him get used to this, maybe those worries would just melt away.

Maybe.

And maybe she didn’t even have to hold back all that much. His arms were still around her, tighter than before. He wanted this. She knew he did. All doom and gloom and sad puppy eyes one minute, and soft touches and flirty murmurs the next. It was exhausting, but Belle would take it for now, if it meant she could have him close. They could pretend together until one day, they didn’t have to pretend anymore. One day, it would be fine. All of it. She didn’t know how or when, but it would be fine.

It had to be fine.

“Stay tonight,” Belle blurted just as Rumple was about to place down his tiles on the board.

Yes, Scrabble again. Their good friend Scrabble - always there for them when conversation dried up and they still craved each other’s company too much to call it a night. With the overhead lights off, her music softly playing and all of her string lights plugged in, they sat on the floor with the coffee table in between, relieved that this particular game of words they were both fond of at least had some rules for them to play by.

“Like before,” Belle clarified. “Just to sleep.”

“I don’t know if I should,” he almost whispered, his eyes shyly fluttering up from the board to her face and back again. What was he afraid of? Her?

“I won’t kiss you anymore, if you’re not comfortable with that.”

He was silent for a beat, pretended to be quite busy fishing out new tiles from the bag, and then quietly murmured, “Now let’s not be rash,” a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. And oh, God, it was like a great big pull at that string that connected his heart to hers, making her crawl around the coffee table so she could sink her fingers in his locks and kiss him again. He laughed into the kiss, but only until she nipped at his lip and shut him up.

Oh, good God. She really needed to get her finger off that switch.

“Sorry,” Belle whispered, feeling the blood rush to her face to stain it red and heat it up in his slightly bewildered stare.

“’s Alright,” he replied, his smile a small, precious treasure. “Not complaining.”

He didn’t complain when Belle asked him to get under the covers, either. She offered to leave the lights on so he could do some reading, but he shook his head and pulled the covers over his shoulders in silence. Belle wriggled until she was comfortable, then clicked the light off and blinked against the blinding darkness. She couldn’t see a thing while her eyes were trying to adjust, and she didn’t know why, but it was making her nervous.

“You know I’m expecting coffee in the morning, right?” she managed. But her voice felt a little shaky. Made sense. Her heart was somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be again, beating louder than it should. So she added, “You shouldn’t have set a precedent,” but her voice was even weaker that time, and she felt the heat of another blush creep up her neck. At least Rumple couldn’t see it with the lights off.

Just him and her in the darkness.

He didn’t answer, but she heard the sheets rustle as he moved a little closer, and just as she was about to ask him if everything was alright, she felt his lips. He kissed her. Just the corner of her mouth. And it was so incredibly gentle a gesture that her breath came out in shivers. She wriggled up as close as she possibly could and buried her face in his shoulder, her eyes clenched firmly shut. His hand was at the back of her head, and she almost felt like crying, but she mustn’t. She had him here, now. That was all that mattered.

With him so close, it was almost easy to forget that he was so far away.


	12. Lasagna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle has another thing she wants to ask of her ghost. This one thing, however, is more important than either one of them realizes.
> 
> Oh, and there's lasagna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly can't believe how nice you guys are. Thank you all so much. This chapter's longer than the previous one, because I'm a mess. Hope you're still enjoying this.

He couldn’t sleep, but he pretended to when Belle woke in the middle of the night and softly whispered his name to see if he was awake. The last time she woke up in the night and he was right there next to her, she kissed his cheek. He wasn’t sure what she’d do this time, but it was probably best not to find out, tempting though it was. She fell asleep again after a while, anyway, with her purrs and soft sounds her own lullaby.

In the darkness of Belle’s apartment, he could think of nothing better to do but to count the sounds. There were her breaths; soothing little sighs he was growing far too used to. Someone in an apartment on another floor was having a sleepless night; moving about, opening and closing doors as gently as they could, trying to stifle the odd cough. A car honked in the distance. The wind whistled every once in a while. A pipe settling in the wall made hollow sounds. The only constants were the hum of the refrigerator and the steady stream of traffic he saw that night she broke him free from his self-imposed prison sentence. But he soon ran out of sounds to notice, which meant that his mind could drift to places he’d rather it didn’t.

If there had still been life for her to kiss out of him…

He’d done the bad thing. It would be ridiculous to pretend he didn’t want to, but in all fairness, Belle was a force to be reckoned with, and he’d underestimated her boldness. She hadn’t exactly been making things easy.

He’d also just forgotten how lovely it was to kiss, to be honest. That played a part in it, too. Decades without a single touch, and then there she came with a few caresses and an exploratory kiss on the cheek for a warning shot, and then all of the sudden she’d decided that the time for shyness was over, and that was that. He lost.

And it was wonderful. He couldn’t possibly have pulled away from her lips against his, his nose against hers, or her arms around his neck to keep him close - though he should have. So there he was, right where he’d promised himself he wouldn’t end up anymore. In her bed again. It seemed like a good plan at first, to let her take the lead and go along with it. He was - of course - a spectacular idiot.

But there was very little point in summing up all the reasons why he was an imbecile and he wouldn’t know a good decision if it skipped up to him and slapped him in the face. Bit too late for all that, about a thousand kisses deep into this beautiful mess as he was. The thing to do now was to figure out how to fix it.

Fewer kisses, maybe? Or none at all? Perhaps they should go back to whatever it was that they had before the dams burst and changed everything. Pretending it hadn’t happened might be the answer, even though he could still see her eyes flutter shut right before her lips claimed his in that dark corner of the library and he doubted the picture would ever leave his mind. Even though he still felt the softness of her mouth if he closed his eyes and focused. Even though he still wanted to kiss her about a million times more than he had already.

But ignoring her was exactly the same strategy he’d turned to when she got a little bold and started dropping hints the size of a horse, and look where that got him. God, this was impossible.

But when they kissed, that storm in the distance was nowhere to be found. When he finally let himself wrap his arms around her - and _God_ , the sound she made - there was no siren going off. No alarms. Just her. And now, in the aftermath, he could feel the winds start up again, blowing those clouds their way.

He quietly got out of bed when the sun rose, because if he was going to abort that ‘let her do whatever she wants’ disaster of a plan of his and regain some sort of semblance of self-control, he couldn’t subject himself to those sleepy blue eyes and that pleased little smile when she saw he hadn’t left after all.

So he stood in her kitchen, staring out of the window as the sun began to give color to the town, waiting for her alarm to go off so he could fire up that coffee machine of hers without waking her up. He knew how to do it, now. Surprisingly easy once you figured it out. Would she have eggs in her refrigerator? Did she have any bread? He wouldn’t mind making her breakfast, but a quick glimpse in her refrigerator told him that that was not going to happen. She must run on sunlight and caffeine in the morning.

He, however, ran on idiotic decisions. He was scribbling down a list of ingredients for her to get should she miraculously see the light at some point during her day and realize that if someone offered to cook, it was only logical to turn your back on frozen pizza and questionable takeaway and wholeheartedly accept the offer. He slipped the list into her coat pocket. That way, it felt a little bit as if he hadn’t _really_ just made another excuse for him to spend more time with her, because she could very well overlook it all together.

And if she did find the list and decide to accept his offer, and if she did circle closer and closer like the loveliest shark and kissed him senseless on her sofa again, well, then it was because she had decided that that was what was going to happen. It would be on her.

Oh, good God, no it wouldn’t. Of course it wouldn’t. What was wrong with him? The mental gymnastics he made himself go through instead of just allowing himself to enjoy the feeling of being seen, known and wanted would earn anyone a gold medal.

He heard her voice before her alarm had even gone off, calling, “Rumple?”

“Down here,” he called back. He started fixing her coffee, smiling to himself as he heard her stretch and yawn up above.

“You’re making me coffee?” she asked, climbing down the ladder.

“Mhm. Shouldn’t have set a precedent,” he replied.

With the pad in the holder, he could press the glowing button and watch thin streams of coffee pour out into that yellow mug she seemed to favor.

“I would have made you breakfast, but it appears you’re living on wartime rations.”

“You’re sweet, but I usually just grab a couple of donuts on the way to the library,” she shrugged, putting her mug of sugary disgrace to her lips for a long sip.

“Good God,” he muttered, shaking his head disapprovingly. “How have you made it this far in life?”

“Mm. Love a bit of judgement with my coffee first thing in the morning,” she teased, deliberately bumping her shoulder into him as she passed him on her way to her computer. Confident that she wouldn’t fall straight through him, was she? Well, she was right, but still… Bit of an assumption, there.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower, but I’m gonna print something in the mean time,” she said, nodding towards what he had always assumed was a printer. Much smaller than the ones he’d seen on TV. He thought it was absolutely fascinating how things kept getting smaller and smaller, faster and faster. Cheaper too, he presumed.

And indeed, the machine in question whirred to life with some strange noises that would have startled him had Belle not given him a heads up. She stood up, gave him a smile and stretched her arms above her head. He’d forgotten to look away and saw just a tiny sliver of skin when her pajama top rode up. Oh. He was getting careless, and she’d gotten much too comfortable with him.

In fact, watching her as she stood there in her pajamas and her sleep-mussed hair and holding that coffee he’d made her, he suddenly realized with a chill he wasn’t sure was pleasant or terrifying that this was an _awfully_ domestic scene they found themselves in. He swallowed and nodded, suddenly hyper aware of the fact that he’d been too busy staring to give some sort of response.

“You can stay here while I’m at work. Watch TV if you like, or read my books.”

“Oh, Belle, that’s very kind of you, but the attic’s fine. Certainly now that I’m drowning in blankets up there.”

She took her lip between her teeth and looked a little unsure, or worse; disappointed, and he had this tiny twinge of an urge to step closer and mess up her hair even more for being so bloody endearing. She needed to get herself into that shower and out of his sight.

“Really, I sort of… I’d like you to stay. I mean, unless you prefer the attic. I guess what I’m saying is you can just drop in whenever you like, whether I’m here or not.”

“Alright. Thank you,” he said. “We’ll see.”

“Great. That’s great,” chirped Belle, her pleased smile making his come out like the sun from behind a cloud. She made it so easy.

The printer was still whirring away, and he couldn’t help but nod towards it with a questioning look, asking “What are you printing, then?”

“Oh!” she cried. “That’s right. That’s my story. What I’ve got so far. It’s not nearly finished, but if you have the time to give it the once over, I’d really appreciate it. I value your opinion and you’ve been a big help so far.”

Then her eyes widened and she hurried to add, “But only if you’re really, really bored! Don’t feel like you should read it just for my sake!”

“I’d be honored.”

“Oh. Good! Thank you. Um, and if by some miracle you’re not fed up with my endless demands yet,” she started, looking down at her toes with a vaguely embarrassed smile, “I’ve got another thing I wanna ask. When I get out of the shower.”

“Why not right now?” he asked, frowning quizzically.

“Strategic timing,” she replied, grinning cheekily as she rushed past him as if she thought he was going to physically stop her and force her question out of her somehow. She climbed up to the mezzanine at an impressive speed and came down with a bunch of clothes held to her chest.

“You’ll have less time to argue after I get out of the shower cause I’ll have to leave for work!” she called out, pulling the bathroom door shut behind her. He smiled and shook his head. Whatever it was, she was clearly expecting him to put up a fight. Better brace himself, then.

The printer finally stopped spitting out pages, and he took the small stack of paper with him to the sofa, where he sat down and began to thumb through it. Belle had certainly made some headway. He decided to read the entire thing over again and see if there was something else he could sketch out. She seemed to like the first sketch he’d given her - enough to frame it, anyway. He had two more upstairs in the attic; perhaps he should show her.

After a few pages, the sound of a hair dryer told him that she was just about ready (Did she always shower this fast or was she bursting to ask him that question?) and he stacked the pages back together and placed them on her coffee table. It didn’t take very long for her to emerge from the bathroom, hair up in a loose bun, make-up done, fiddling with an uncooperative button on her ridiculously tight jeans and frowning at it as if that would help. She managed eventually, though, and when she turned her attention to him, he was quick to wipe the amused grin from his face.

“I’m impressed, Belle.”

“Hm?”

“That didn’t take very long.”

“Oh, thanks, I guess,” she said, smiling to herself as she slipped into a pair of flats by the door. “Lots of practice. Plus, it’s just jeans and a t-shirt. Not like it’s a dramatic costume change, you know.”

“Still,” he replied, hoping to distract her from whatever it was she was about to ask him, “there’s your make-up and your hair, too.”

“Routine,” she explained, shrugging.

She was slipping into her coat, and he was almost home free. At least, that’s what it looked like before she turned to him while she was buttoning up her coat and said, “So this thing I wanted to ask. I thought about asking you last night, but you were asleep, I think.”

He nodded, hoping he didn’t look as guilty as he felt. If he did, Belle wasn’t letting on. She was wrapping her scarf around her neck, now, and continued, “I can give you my reasoning and a bunch of arguments for this later, but for now I just wanna say that I think maybe it’d be really good if you met Ruby.”

His mouth dropped open. That… he hadn’t seen coming.

“Don’t say no just yet. I won’t push you. I’d just really like for you to think about it.”

“Belle…”

Her name was just about the only thing he could manage in response to that, other than a mildly panic-stricken expression. Show himself to someone else? Did she realize exactly what she was asking of him?

“Don’t worry about whether she can handle it,” Belle cooed, slipping her cellphone in the same pocket of her coat in which he’d slipped that note, making him clench his jaw in suspense, “cause I know she can. I just want you to consider it.”

Must not have noticed the note. Good.

“Please?”

Belle didn’t even have to pout anymore, not that she ever really did that consciously. Knowing that she _might_ was enough to keep him from objecting at this point. He’d have to let her down later, of course, but for now, he could tell her he’d consider it, and she would leave for work in a good mood.

“I’ll think about it.”

Her entire face lit up and that was the first time her smile had made him feel _worse_. She bounced up to him, wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you! That’s all I ask! I’ll be back around five!”

The last he saw of her before she closed the door behind her was a blissful grin.

This was terrible. She was supposed to keep him her secret. She was supposed to keep him to herself so she would tire of him quicker, could cut him loose easier, could pretend he’d never happened, but instead she was trying to make him more real.

An imaginary friend wasn’t _shared_. And if he wasn’t her imaginary friend, how would she ever grow out of him?

He couldn’t let this happen.

…

It was a quiet Monday, which was just as well, because Belle didn’t much feel like plastering on a happy face and pretending she hadn’t spent the day before kissing a ghost and making her life a billion times more complicated. Difficult to get those thoughts out of her head when she was right back at the scene of the crime, like an arrogant arsonist. She _had_ to come back, of course. Probably shouldn’t have set fire to her workplace.

So Belle had taken her foot from the accelerator. A bit. She hadn’t kissed him yet today, for one. (Well, not on the lips.) She’d wanted to, but she sensed a certain purposely kept distance this morning, and she didn’t want to come bursting through any defensive barriers Rumple may have decided to put up after last night. With his gentle mockery and his small, contained smiles this morning, Belle could read him like an open book and see that he was being a little cautious. She couldn’t really blame him either.

In the throes of this intense whirlwind of emotions, she’d been pretending that kissing Rumple was like kissing any given guy; like that one over there, standing in front of the crime section, taking his time to pick and choose and making Belle wish he’d hurry up so she could stop sitting quite so upright in her chair and get back to moping, or thinking, or wallowing, or whatever this strange mood of hers was.

But kissing that guy over there was nothing like kissing a ghost. Clearly. That guy probably didn’t have any deep-rooted self-loathing issues with a massive supernatural existential crisis mixed in. That guy could be kissed in public. That guy… wasn’t Belle’s type at all, but she could definitely spot a few pros that Rumple didn’t have.

Belle sighed and shook her head at her own thoughts. It didn’t even matter. All of the upsides of a regular, non-dead guy with a little bit more emotional stability (she was assuming that fellow who was now heading over here with a couple of books wasn’t a complete basket case, of course) couldn’t stack up against everything Rumple had to offer. Normalcy didn’t stand a chance in the face of his bright, boyish grin and that look in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t watching that made her heart sing.

“Bringing anything back today, sir?”

“No, just taking these.”

“Alright! I’ll just scan these for you, then. Do you have a card?”

Belle wished people would remember to hold their card ready, honestly. But she smiled patiently and waited for the man who was blissfully unaware that he had been sized up against a ghost and found lacking despite some attractive qualities (such as being visible all of the time) to take his card out of his wallet.

“Thank you, sir.”

A few beeps and some pleasantries about the weather later, and Belle was alone again in her library. In which she’d kissed a ghost. Like, a lot.

Belle sighed and folded her arms on the counter so she could rest her head on them and continue her hopeless pondering. What was it she wanted? Well, Rumple, obviously. And she also wanted to go out with him in public, and a sense of security and emotional stability, sure. But she didn’t want those things as much as she wanted _him_ \- the man who let her call him by this silly, childish nickname instead of his actual name simply because he knew she preferred it. The man who illustrated a scene from her story beautifully to make up for snapping at her just once. The man who’d laid down his life for his son without a moment’s hesitation and was all alone in this world, now.

The man who didn’t think they should be together but promised her never to up and leave without a single word ever again.

For lack of anything better to do, Belle began to write down a list of questions, the majority of which she’d probably never ask Rumple because they were either embarrassing or probably astoundingly dumb. After some consideration and a whole lot of eye-rolling at herself, she had come up with eleven questions.

  
1\. How do you get things up to the attic?  
2\. How high can you float? (Could you just keep going up?)  
3\. What’s up with the electricity thing?  
4\. How come you forgot all that stuff?  
5\. What was that glow about?  
6\. If you glowed because I kissed you, what will you do if we  
7\. What’s under your clothes?  
8\. What’s your favorite color?  
9\. Does it feel nice when we kiss?  
10\. Do you like me?  
11\. Could you pick me up and float me?

One was practical. Two was a bit silly, maybe. Three, four and five were reasonable questions, but he probably couldn’t answer them. She couldn’t even bring herself to finish writing out six, but it made her giggle, so she kept it on there anyway. Seven would be embarrassing to ask given its position right after six, but could be chalked up to scientific curiosity without that context. Eight was a ham-handed attempt to steer herself away from the general tone of six and seven that proved futile when she wrote out nine. She was curious, though. He obviously felt pressure, but was that pressure… pleasurable at all? Maybe she should have formulated it that way. Ten was infantile but sincere, and eleven was the (il)logical follow-up to two.

And then the doors opened again.

Belle hurriedly shoved that sad little piece of paper in her jeans pocket and moved to sit up straight in her chair. But it was only little Alicia dropping by after school to return some books. Her hair wasn’t braided anymore, instead those tight black coils were given free rein of her cute little head. Just as adorable.

“Alicia!”

“Hi, Belle!”

“All done with these?” she asked, scanning her card which she always had ready for her, right on top of the pile of books. Best library member ever.

“Yup!”

“Awesome. Hope they were good.”

“Yeah, no bad ones this time.”

She scanned the books, but felt Alicia’s eyes on her. When she looked up, the girl was giving her a curious look, as if she were reading her face.

“Something up, doll?”

“You look less sad, but not really happy, either.”

This was really not the thing to discuss with a 10-year-old, but at this point, this little girl was more informed about her love life than her best friend was, and Belle was practically bursting at the seams to get some of it off her chest. At the very least, Alicia deserved an update. She obviously cared. An age appropriate version of events, of course.

“Remember that friend of mine who left town without telling me?”

Alicia nodded.

“You were right,” Belle said, smiling. “He came back.”

“Told ya!” she chirped, grinning bright. “Did you ask him why he left?”

“Yeah. It’s difficult to explain, though.”

“Try,” she said with a shrug.

“He… He left because he thought I would be better off without him.”

“But you weren’t, cause I saw how sad you were,” she said, nodding.

“Yeah. And I got really angry at him and told him I didn’t want him to make that kind of decision without talking to me.”

“Did he say he was sorry?”

“Mhm. And we got back to being friends. And it’s been really… nice. For the most part.”

She blinked at her and for a moment there, Belle thought she was going to see right through her and know, somehow just _know_ that she’d lied to her when she asked her whether this was a “boyfriend and girlfriend thing,” but that’s not what she said.

“Are you still scared he’s going to leave again?”

Well? Was she?

“It’s complicated, doll,” Belle sighed. “Let’s just go get you some new books, okay? There’s a couple of new ones I think you might like.”

They walked around together while Alicia told her about her day at school and asked questions about how the library worked - as usual. It was as if she was just raring to take over from her once she’d quit or retired, and Belle absolutely adored her for it. She was her little assistant librarian in training, and she guzzled up every little fact and every piece of information she could pry out of her, and she couldn’t help but smile whenever she came walking through those doors.

But when the doors fell shut after her and she was alone again, the sad thoughts and uncertainties ganged up on her like nothing had happened.

Belle believed Rumple when he said he wouldn’t leave her like that again - that wasn’t the scary thing. The scary thing was wondering what was going to happen instead. He cared for her; Belle could tell. She’d written it down on the list of questions, yeah, but that was because she had to admit to herself it would be nice to actually _hear_ it from him. But his smiles for her were sincere, and his kisses were all the proof she needed, really.

The thing was, was he ever going to stop worrying? Would they ever be able to go more than a few hours without him making some sort of terrible comment about himself, or looking so unbearably sad she wanted to wrap him in a blanket and hold him for about a million years? If he wasn’t going to leave her, what was going to happen to them?

Her phone chimed and buzzed in the pocket of her coat, draped over the back of her chair. Oops, forgotten to silence it. Bad librarian. But when she reached in to retrieve it, she felt something that shouldn’t have been there. She fished out not only her phone, but also a folded piece of paper she didn’t recognize. What to check out first - text or note?

Note, duh. That was the greater mystery of the two. She unfolded it and recognized the handwriting immediately from his elegantly signed name on that sketch. She couldn’t even try not to smile, even though it was just a list of stuff. Ingredients? It seemed like it. Yeah, a list of ingredients and his name at the bottom. Well, not his name. He’d written _Rumple_.

Belle didn’t know whether she wanted to scream or laugh. So he wanted to cook for her again, did he? So he could start ragging on himself while he sliced the tomatoes? Go off on the inherent wrongness of his very existence while she tried to enjoy her meal? Make her think he wished they’d never met as they did the dishes?

Well, he could do the bloody dishes on his own, then.

But still… She wouldn’t mind experiencing that cosiness again, of a handsome man toiling away for her in her kitchen and the strange but interesting intimacy of dinner for two where only one person was actually eating. She would take the sudden bouts of sullenness just for the pleasant conversation and the little meaningful moments of happiness in between. Was that pathetic? Probably.

She sighed and hoped that the text message she just received would tell her what to do about this messed up situation she didn’t even really want to get herself out of, and as she read it, Belle realized with a wry laugh that it sort of did.

_Pizza girl talk and wine at your place tonight?_

Oh, Ruby. Sweet, long-suffering Ruby. They hadn’t gotten pissed together in ages. But more importantly; she had no clue of anything that had happened after the breakup. She knew there was someone new (figured that one out real quick) but that was just about the extent of it. Belle felt guilty, she really did. But it just wasn’t that easy.

Ruby’s perspective on whatever this thing was was probably just what she needed, but that wasn’t possible right now, was it? If she could simply omit the fact that the man she was head over heels for was a ghost and get some general advice that way, she would have run into Ruby’s arms to spill her guts _way_ before she had made things even more complicated by kissing him. Belle was so desperate for help she was venting to a 10-year-old just because she’d shown an interest. (And Alicia’s track record for good advice was impressive. That too.)

Ruby would know what to do, even though she would probably have some sobering thoughts to share, first. Thoughts Belle had been pushing to the back of her mind for a while now. But God, she wanted to gush about his perfect kisses and his accent and how his hands could nearly wrap around her waist, and how badly she wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him until it got to be too much for him, too, and he couldn’t help but put his hands somewhere a little more forward. She wanted to lure him out. Wear him down. Have him come crashing into her like he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

Ah.

Well. That turned a little inappropriate for work hours. (Eh, only about five more minutes before she was officially off the clock, anyway.)

So. Pizza, girl talk and wine? No. Lasagna and ghost therapy. And wine.

But maybe after tonight, she could tell her, Belle thought as she texted Ruby a flimsy excuse. _Show_ her, even. Rumple had promised to consider it, hadn’t he? She wouldn’t pout and whine and flirt her way to victory this time, even though it was tempting. This was huge and delicate at the same time, and Belle knew that it was his decision.

He just really had to say yes. He had to. She didn’t know how she could possibly…

That sick, heavy feeling in her stomach told her enough,and she didn’t have to finish the thought - _couldn’t_ finish the thought. He had to say yes.

But she wouldn’t push for it.

…

He did stay in her apartment for a little while, but he didn’t watch television as Belle had suggested. Instead he read her story, circled a few typing errors, made little notes here and there if a question came to mind. He began to picture the scenes as she’d described them, and went back up to his attic to try a few sketches. He rather liked the thought of that little girl almost entirely enveloped by darkness, save for her little lantern. He drew her safe in a bubble of light, barefoot and in her nightgown. Her skin was dark, because Belle had told him she pictured that little girl who lived in the same building - Alicia, was it? - but the surrounding darkness was pitch black, and her little lantern lit up her face. She was light in the darkness, but it was more than she expected. It was closing in.

And then he heard Belle’s footsteps (he could pretty much tell every tenant apart that way at this point) and he decided to drop back down and into her apartment to greet her. She really seemed like she wanted him there, this morning. He could oblige.

And he got there just in time to hear her keys jangling as she opened the door. There she was, with a smile on her face and two shopping bags in her hand.

“Hiya!”

“Hello.”

“So,” Belle said, placing her heavy bags on the kitchen counter with a bit of a groan and the distinct sound of a glass bottle settling on the counter, “apparently I’m having lasagna!”

“Figured it out?”

“Well, your note did literally say ‘lasagna sheets,’ so it wasn’t that big a mystery,” she muttered with half a smirk twisting up her lips. “Now go on, chef. Impress me.”

Belle watched him slice this and that, prepare the sauce, brown and broil, stole bits of tomato when she thought he wasn’t looking and otherwise distracted him by asking questions the answers to which she clearly wasn’t going to remember, because she had no plans of ever cooking for herself. It made him think she was waiting for him to say something about the suggestion she made this morning, and he slowly became aware of an unpleasant pressure in his chest. Guilt, likely. As soon as he put that lasagna in the oven, there would be very little else to talk about but that elephant in the room, and then he would have to disappoint her.

He wasn’t looking forward to that. Would it be better to suggest she open her bottle of wine before he gave her the bad news? No, no, that was an awful thing to even consider. He needed to brave her pouts and the disappointment in her voice, undiluted. Full force. He owed her that much.

She slid from the counter to help him put the heavy dish in the oven, and when the door closed with a creak and a thud, he barely dared look at her, but when he did, he was lost. He knew Belle didn’t mean for her big blue eyes to read like two strongly worded accusations; that was his conscience talking. He had to do it now, or he would only buckle later. Out with it. No preamble.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to tell anyone about me,” he said, trying to keep his eyes locked with hers - she deserved at least that - but he found himself failing miserably when her lips rounded in a silent ‘oh,’ and her brow furrowed the slightest bit in deep, obvious disappointment. So he turned away and pretended he needed to check whether he’d set the right temperature on the oven, waiting for her arguments or her gently worded explanations as to just how badly he’d let her down.

Coward.

“Why?”

“Belle,” he sighed, moving to lean against the counter, finally gathering enough courage to look her in the eye again, “I can’t show myself to people just like that. What if she tells someone? What if she panics? I’m not some… man. I’m a ghost.”

“I know!” she cried. “I’m not a complete -”

She stopped mid sentence, and he swallowed a lump in his throat. From the tone of her voice, it didn’t sound as if the rest of her sentence was going to be a very positive one.

“The timer on the oven doesn’t work,” she said curtly, “so we’ll have to use the one on my phone.”

Wait, what? Was that it?

“How many minutes?”

“Forty, give or take,” he replied, his eyebrows knit together as he tried to figure out just what was happening. Her eyes refused to meet his now that he was brave enough to look at her. She fiddled with her phone, placed it on the counter and without looking up, went over to sit herself down on the sofa. Well, she dropped herself onto it, really; curled up, her elbow on the arm rest, her hand on her forehead.

And he was still stood in her kitchen like a crass idiot, unsure of what to do or what to say. She wasn’t exactly taking this well. That much was obvious.

But he couldn’t ask her whether she was alright. He knew she wasn’t, and it would be insulting to pretend he didn’t. Standing there in her kitchen, all he could see was her bun over the back rest of the sofa. If he saw her face right now, he would die a second death of shame, he was sure of it.

But that would be just what he deserved.

He pushed himself away from the counter, swallowed his fears and joined her, pulling her arm chair a little bit closer to where she was draped over the sofa, her hand still half covering her face. Her silence was frightening. Why wasn’t she telling him off? Why wasn’t she trying to convince him that he was wrong and she was right?

“Belle,” he said softly. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but now was not the time. She looked up and sighed, and the look on her face was as fatal as the sharpest sword. Not anger. Not at all. Much worse - utter sadness.

This was bigger than he’d thought. This wasn’t some little whim of hers. He’d miscalculated. Gravely.

“This is important to you, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry about that,” she sighed, forcing a little smile that only served to make her look even more crestfallen, faltering and failing as it was. “I can’t ask you to trust me on this. It’s bigger than just taking a walk. I know that.”

“But talk to me, then. Tell me why I should.”

“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head, her brow deeply wrinkled. “Not without putting you on the spot, and I’ve done more than enough of that. I won’t do that anymore. It’s not fair to you.”

Her voice tore away layers of his heart. Not shaking - not quite - but strained and forced, as if she was choking back words she desperately wanted to keep inside. Poor lass. Sweet, brave Belle, trying to spare him the guilt of breaking her heart.

Why would he ever want to do that?

“Belle,” he said softly, reaching out to take her hand in both of his, “don’t let me step on a land mine. If there are consequences, here, I need to know. Please, tell me. Do you _need_ this?”

That was all he needed to know. If she needed this, he would do it. If she thought her friend could keep quiet, then who was he to doubt her? If he could take her warmth, and her light, and her embrace, then he could give her this, couldn’t he?

If she needed it.

Belle’s brave face crumbled and fell away and she nodded, her bright blue eyes shimmering with the hint of a tear or two, her lip trembling for just a fraction of a second before her words came spilling forth from her mouth like water from a spring, “She’s my best friend and I hate lying to her. I hate it so much. It makes me feel like a terrible person, and all I want to do is tell her how gorgeous you are, and how good of a kisser you are, and how much I like you, and I can’t… I thought I could handle this on my own, but I can’t!”

Oh. He stood up and sat down right next to her, her gravity pulling him in. She scooted closer, her legs under her, her hands pulling nervously at the hem of her t-shirt, her eyes wide and almost wild with emotion.

“And I know you think you should never have talked to me, and that you wish all of this had never happened, but -”

“No!”

He took her wrists in his hands, rubbed soothing circles with his thumbs. “That’s not how I feel.”

“But it seems like you do think that sometimes. And I just don’t know if I can keep…”

No more of this. He didn’t want her to keep weaving him into reality and making it difficult for him to let her go in the future, but the thought of breaking her like this was far, far worse. And yes, he was only postponing the inevitable. This was just a stay of execution. He would meet this friend of hers, and Belle would be all the more convinced that whatever this was could end well, and the scale of destruction when it blew up in their faces would be a million times worse.

But not now. Not yet. It would hurt more in the long run, but he couldn’t.

“Belle, it’s alright,” he cooed in response to her softly whispered apologies, cradling her face and kissing her cheeks softly. She wasn’t crying, but he knew she wanted to. She was staying strong for him, even though he’d told her it was alright to spill her guts and _make_ him.

“I’ll meet your friend.”

He wasn’t sure whether she’d heard him at first. He had her face in his hands, still, until she threw her arms around him and pushed her face in the crook of his neck, whispering, “Thank you.”

He wrapped his arms around her, squeezed her gently to let her know that it was alright. Now her chin was resting on his shoulder and her fingers came running through his hair, and her voice near his ear murmured, “I meant to keep it to myself.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said, pulling back to look her in the eyes and smile.

“I didn’t wanna force you,” she continued, pausing to bite her lip in thought. “I keep pushing you because I know - I _think_ \- you can do more than you think you can, but maybe that’s selfish and arrogant of me. I didn’t want to manipulate you.”

“You didn’t. You were honest, that’s all.”

“Still,” she sighed, shaking her head, looking down at her hands folded in her lap, “I made you change your mind.”

“Are you getting hard of hearing, Belle?” he soothed, with a silent laugh. “I said I’m glad. When I said I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t have all the facts.”

God, was this what she had to deal with every time he got into one of his self-deprecating moods? Poor thing deserved a medal for not giving up on him; this wasn’t easy. But the smile she gave him then was worth it. Absolutely worth it. It was a small, precious thing that made him feel that strange sensation somewhere down where his stomach should be again, and it was almost enough to make him want to gather her in his arms and pull her onto his lap.

He didn’t, of course. He’d made enough terrible decisions for the day.

“Scrabble until the timer goes off?” she asked in a small voice, a tentative hint of cheer just underneath.

“If you’re in the mood to be absolutely humiliated, sure,” he sighed, his pokerface crumbling and making place for a grin as she flashed him a narrow-eyed smirk, her head tilted just a little bit.

“Yeah? Tonight’s the night you get your revenge, you think?” she teased.

“Oh, aye. I can feel it.”

“Alright! Go feel it in the kitchen while you pour me a glass of wine. I’ll set up the board.”

Ah, there was his demanding librarian again, teasing and smirking, preparing to make him eat dust. Good. He’d missed her.

He still didn’t stand a chance against her in this game. She was making a mockery of his score and looking gorgeous while she did it, idly swirling her red wine and giving him provocative looks with a quirked eyebrow over the brim of her glass. She was mopping the floor with him, and he loved every minute of it.

Belle only paused the beatings to eat his lasagna, which she seemed to love, thankfully. She said she’d burned the roof of her mouth and she didn’t care. She almost spilled an entire forkful on her lap in her enthusiasm to shovel it in her mouth, and he found himself constantly smiling or laughing, or shaking his head and waving away her compliments.

She wanted to skip the dishes and get right back to making him pay for his flippant remark about winning tonight, so that they did. It was only until the second glass of wine was gone and he had poured her a third that she grew tired of winning and scooted away from the coffee table to rest her back against the sofa and give him a strange, pleased, languid smile.

“C’mere,” she said, patting the space on the floor next to her. She was tipsy, for sure. He’d better be careful, now. But still he obliged and settled himself next to her. Her legs were stretched out, her feet disappearing underneath the coffee table. He crossed his legs and let his eyes feast on Belle’s pretty, flushed face.

“I’m bored with Scrabble!” she said, grinning and bumping her shoulder into his as she tried to reach into her jeans pocket for something.

“I can tell. What are you up to?”

“I’ve got something here,” she said, groaning a bit when she finally managed to get her fingers into her pocket, “that I really shouldn’t show you.”

Oh dear. Oh dear, no.

“Ah!” she cried, pulling out a piece of paper with a victorious grin. “Here! Read it and don’t look at me while you read it, cause I’m embarrassed.”

“Are you sure you want me to read it, then?” he asked.

“Just do it, Rumple,” she demanded in her deeper voice; the one that almost made feel something he hadn’t felt in ages. He swallowed and turned his attention to the note.

A list of questions, all varying in levels of awkwardness. One in particular… well. Let’s just say he wasn’t going to be answering _that_ one.

“And you wrote these sober?” he teased, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Stone cold,” she giggled. Was it an effect of her cosy little string lights, or was she getting even redder?

“And I suppose you’d like me to answer these?”

“That’s the idea, yeah.”

He sighed a dramatic sigh and narrowed his eyes at the bit of paper impertinence in his hands, secretly pleased that his little grouchy act was making her giggle even more.

“Someone needs to leave their door unlocked, and the hallways need to be empty for me to take a book up to the attic,” he explained.

“Really?” she almost gasped, making him chuckle softly.

“Yes, really. I can’t make things invisible or move them through walls like I can my own body.”

“Oh. Wow, that sounds like it’s exciting, actually. Like a secret spy mission.”

“God, no,” he muttered, shaking his head. “That’s why I started haunting the town librarian.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but she couldn’t possibly tame her beautiful grin, and he couldn’t stop himself from tapping her gently on the nose to see her scrunch her face up and complete the adorable picture.

“Keep reading!” she cried.

“I don’t know how far up I can float. I don’t care, either. All nice things are down here.”

“Aw!”

“Who says I’m talking about you?”

“Your smile when I said ‘aw.’”

“Shush. Next question.”

She scooted a little closer and put her hand on his knee. It seemed like a casual, thoughtless thing to do, but he was wary of her boldness tonight. Especially with that wine coursing through her veins.

“I don’t know the answers to three and four. I think perhaps I partly use electricity as an energy form. As for four, well, that deeper sleep… It’s very consuming. It’s like a thick black smoke, and…” He trailed off to glance at her face, and she looked utterly confused. “… and now’s not really the time to discuss that, I think.”

“Alright. Next question.”

Ah, the glowing incident. He sighed, shrugged, smirked and told her, “Why don’t you take it as a compliment? You obviously want to.”

“Rumple!” she laughed, squeezing his knee. “Yeah, alright. You’ve got me there. I _am_ flattered. Next question.”

Oh no. Not the next question. Let’s pretend that one wasn’t there at all. The one after that wasn’t too innocent, either, but he didn’t want to underestimate Belle’s acuity at this point. If he skipped one question, she might not notice. Two? Pushing his luck.

“Seriously? What’s under my clothes?” he sighed.

“Yeah! Come on! Tell me!” Belle demanded with a giggle.

“A ghost. Next question.”

“Oh, come on!” she whined.

“Next question,” he insisted. “What’s my favorite color. Hm. I don’t know. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know,” she replied with her brow deeply furrowed, shrugging comically.

“No favorite colors, then. Alright.”

“Next!”

“Does it feel…”

He blinked at that piece of paper, stared at the words for a while. He wanted to say that no; it didn’t feel _nice_ when they kissed, because he didn’t feel nice things. He felt pressure, and that was that. But up to a few days ago, he didn’t feel warmth either, and that little fact had to slowly dawn on him, too.

But now that those prettily written letters asked him that question and his go-to dismissive answer sounded false in his mind’s ears, he suddenly realized that the correct answer was yes. It did feel nice. When her soft lips faintly teased his, it was almost ticklish. It felt _good_ when he had her lip between his, and she made a little sound she probably wasn’t aware of at all. The vibrations of her voice against his skin when she did that…

Oh, good God.

“It doesn’t _hurt_ when we kiss,” he mumbled, nervously and uselessly smoothing the wrinkles from that little square of paper against his thigh for a moment, to give him something to busy himself with while Belle undoubtedly rolled her eyes at him.

“Do you like me?” she asked before he could even read the question, her hand slipping from his knee down just a little bit.

“Yes.”

It was all he could manage. This was a terrible idea and he needed to get this list over and done with so he could hurry to his attic and cower.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

She pressed a soft kiss to his shoulder, then leaned her head against it. It was a sweet gesture, and it reassured him a little bit that sweet was what she was aiming for. Perhaps she hadn’t meant for her hand to slip. She’d had some wine, after all. Let’s not forget the wine.

“Final question. Can I pick you up and float you?”

She laughed again. He loved the sound of her laughter, but _feeling_ it was just as nice. It was a belly laugh, and it made her body shake against his. He couldn’t resist sneaking an arm around her waist. She was so warm and soft, and her breaths so close to his ear just made him want to have her nearer.

“Well? Can you?” asked his wine-guzzling librarian.

“If you don’t behave yourself, you’ll find out in the middle of the night just as you’re about to fall asleep.”

“Pfff!”

She bumped her shoulder into him again, but this time she followed it up with another bump, and then suddenly she’d crawled up onto her knees, and her hands were on his shoulders, pulling him away from the sofa and pushing him down to the floor with the most mischievous grin he’d seen on her thus far.

“Belle!” he laughed nervously.

“You skipped one,” she murmured. He felt like his stomach just flipped. That was impossible.

“I didn’t.”

She crawled over him like a lion over its prey. He was paralyzed. Her hands moved from his shoulders to his chest, and her hair fell to brush his face, and then she leaned down, her forehead pressed against his, bumping their noses together playfully. Her eyes…

“Liar,” she whispered.

“I’m not.”

She smiled and put a fingertip against his lips, lilting, “And now you’re lying about being a liar.”

“Belle,” he breathed.

She was pressing kisses to his cheek and his jaw, drifting lower until all of the sudden her lips were on his neck, and he had to gently guide her head back up, his fingers under her chin. He needed to leave before she asked for something he couldn’t give, but the look in her eyes in all its terrifying intensity and the blush on her cheeks froze him in place for a moment, his lips moving without sound, stumbling over the words he didn’t want to say until finally, as her eyes stopped keeping his prisoner and moved to his lips instead, he managed a dry-mouthed, “I should go.”

She snapped out of whatever this mood of hers was and moved off of him, sitting back with her legs curled in front of her, her eyes wide and her lips parted in mild shock.

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s alright.”

Her charming blush had taken over her entire face, and she wrapped her arms around her drawn up legs. Poor thing thought she'd embarrassed herself. He wanted to scoop her up and see if they couldn’t give number eleven a try after all.

“Really, it’s alright,” he insisted when the sight of her deer-in-the-headlights eyes peeking at him over her knees got to be too much for him to bear. “You’re drunk. It’s late. You’ve got work tomorrow.”

He laughed at the look of complete disgust on her face when he uttered the word ‘work.’ What a tremendous change of atmosphere. Thank _God_. Because whatever that was was not something that could happen. She was forgetting what he was, again, wasn’t she?

The thing was… if he’d let her… or if instead of letting his arms lie there uselessly up over his head, he’d wrapped them around her and made her body come crashing down onto his…

He might have forgotten, too.

“Can I get a good night kiss?” Belle asked, sucking her lip between her teeth again and giving him her well-practiced, always effective puppy eyes.

He sighed, stood up, held out his hand to her and pulled her up, too. But she overbalanced, landing herself in his arms again - a warm, giggly mess. Which was fine. He was going to get her in that position, anyway. One arm around her waist, one hand gently tilting her face up, he leaned down and kissed her beautiful wine-stained lips. There she was with her soft, pleased sounds again. A barely audible mewl this time, right as her fingers came digging in his hair. What was it about his hair that she liked so much? Was it very soft? Good purchase? Not that it mattered. He absolutely loved it.

“Sometimes I forget you were born in the 19th century,” she murmured against his lips. “You don’t kiss like it.”

“How could you possibly know?” he growled, smirking as he wrapped another arm around her waist and squeezed. “Kiss many ghosts, do you?”

“Oh, you know,” she giggled, “just the average amount.”

It was good to see her smile. When their arms fell to their sides and they stepped back, the silence was deafening but not entirely uncomfortable. The eye of the storm was a nice place to be, wasn’t it?

“Good night, Belle,” he said softly.

“Good night. And thank you. For agreeing…”

“Just drink a glass of water before bed, and don’t you dare fall off that ladder and break your genius head, alright?”

“Alright.”

He stared at her flushed cheeks and her gorgeous smile for just a few more seconds, then left her alone in her apartment. Up to the safety of his attic, where she hadn’t yet tried to devour him whole. Where he could still feel as if he had some sort of handle on the situation and where the coolness of the cold October air sneaking in through the cracks in the roof kept him rational.

 _Would_ have kept him rational.

But question number nine wouldn’t leave him alone all through the night, no matter how hard he tried to get those lips out of his mind and onto paper so he could shove them in a drawer and get himself together.

He couldn’t help it. It felt nice when they kissed.


	13. Connect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle finally gets to share her secret with Ruby. The relief and elation that this brings, however, might just get her into even more trouble. No-one plays Scrabble tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter. 11k, I think. Next one might take me longer to complete.
> 
> So. Yes. Rating change for reasons. This was always going to happen, but if you read the comments so far, you'll know that that hasn't stopped SOME PEOPLE (<3) from reminding me that I should.
> 
> As for why I didn't immediately rate this M instead of T, well, I didn't know how long it was going to take to get to this point. Figured it'd be better to just change it when it happened and I didn't want to give the impression that that was where the emphasis lay. I hope this hasn't discouraged or excluded anyone from reading the rest of the story. I apologize if it has.
> 
> Thank you.

They spent Tuesday evening in a strange little bubble, cuddled up close on her sofa with tangled limbs and soft voices, talking about how they were going to introduce him to Ruby, and kissing in the silence in between. They could barely stray from each other’s arms for more than a few minutes, and even though it was lovely to finally stop struggling against the magnetic pull between them, Belle felt a tangible sense of desperation behind the force, somehow. As if they were bracing themselves for some violent shock and clinging on tight so that at least they might find themselves near one another in the inevitable wreckage.

But nice, mostly.

Belle decided - and Rumple agreed - that it was probably better to have Ruby believe that she’d lost her mind completely for a minute or so, so Belle could warn her that she was going to see someone appear out of thin air and let her get used to the idea (in as much as that was possible) rather than just spring a translucent man on her from the get go. Wednesday was going to be the night. Belle didn’t work on Thursdays, so if there was an aftermath to deal with, she could spend the rest of the night mopping up the mess and sleep in the day after.

It all seemed like a decent plan, until Belle looked at the time on her laptop Wednesday evening and realized that Ruby would be there any minute, and her heart started pounding, her stomach twisting and turning, and her mouth drying up. She’d forgotten what the shock of seeing a ghost was like. The sharpness of that jarring first glimpse of him like a flash of lightning had been replaced with other, soft-edged memories, like his smile first thing in the morning and his fingers lightly touching hers as he handed her her coffee.

Rumple was much less translucent now, but you could still see through him, and the fact that he lacked mass in the traditional sense was obvious. Those things weren’t that easy to come to terms with, and it was Belle’s responsibility to cushion that blow for Ruby as best as she could. This was big.

“Are you alright?” he asked, jolting her out of her panic for a moment.

Rumple was sitting in the arm chair, a book in his lap, a concerned look on his face. If she hadn’t been so very nervous, she would have appreciated the sight of him so at ease in her apartment, looking as if he was finally alright with being there, but sadly; she was a bit of a wreck. Belle had been pacing the last few minutes, from the kitchen to the sofa where she could only sit down for all of ten seconds before jumping up again to check the time on her computer. Over and over.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just nervous.”

“Don’t you think you should leave that to me?” he asked, one corner of his mouth pulling up in a kind smile. “I am, after all, the one whose social circle is about to undergo a one hundred percent increase in size.”

Belle sat down again and bit her lip. That made sense. Rumple had more reason to be nervous. He hadn’t shown himself to anyone but her in decades, and he was trusting her to share his secret with someone he’d never even met.

“It’s gonna be fine, Rumple,” she said, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking at all. “She can deal with this.”

But she knew she wasn’t trying to reassure _him_. Rumple looked calm as could be, and Belle was ever so grateful for that. No, she was trying to reassure herself. But it would be fine, Belle knew. Ruby wouldn’t make a fuss. She wouldn’t freak out… for very long, she didn’t think. She’d accept it, Belle was sure of it.

It was still terrifying to think that she would finally share this intense secret with someone, but Belle knew she’d picked the right person and there was nothing to be worried about. Not that she would have picked anyone else, mind. Belle didn’t have that many close friends. A bunch of friendly acquaintances, yes, but no-one she would trust with a secret of these proportions. Belle had learned over the years that she didn’t need that many people in her life. She had her father, who she could call any time, day or night, and who loved her unconditionally. And then there was Ruby, whom she trusted so incredibly much she was about to let her in on the biggest secret Belle had ever kept in her entire life.

It would be fine.

But a knock on the door still made her jump up from the sofa with a sudden start and rush over to Rumple to grab his shoulders, bend down and kiss his cheek. Not once, not twice, not even three times. Four frantic kisses. Each a little bit nearer to his lips until she kissed those, too. She wasn’t sure why. Morale boost?

“Belle,” he laughed. “Lovely though this is, your friend’s waiting.”

“I know. Sorry. Please, _please_ show up when I ask you to or she’ll have me committed.”

“That’d be evil of me, wouldn’t it?” he teased, smirking. God, even the thought of there being a second’s delay was enough to get her heart pumping even faster.

“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head.

His playful smirk melted to make way for a warm smile, and in the deeper, soothing voice he usually saved for when it was very late or very early, said, “Of course, sweetheart.”

_Sweetheart_. The word rang in her ears and resonated as if there were strings strung in her chest, striking a chord and filling her entire body with the vibrations of the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. Sweetheart.

Another knock, a little louder this time. Rumple faded out completely. Belle shook off that strange feeling, hurried to the door and was about to open it when she realized that Rumple was still holding his book open in his lap. It was just hovering over the seat.

“Put that book down,” she whispered urgently. “It looks like it’s floating.”

“Oh! Right!”

It fell onto the coffee table with a sudden bang she hoped Ruby hadn’t heard through the door. She cringed and shook her head disapprovingly.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“Shh.”

Belle opened the door to find Ruby standing there, a grin on her face and a bottle of wine cradled in her arms as if she were carrying a newborn child.

“Hey, beautiful!” she cried, bouncing her way inside, all the way to the kitchen. “Can’t stay that long, I’ve got a surprise birthday party to go to.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Was that going to be a problem? Should they abort the mission? Maybe it was selfish, but she really didn’t want to. She’d wanted this for weeks, now, and she’d been a nervous wreck all evening. The last thing she needed was to pack it all up and undergo all of that anxiety yet again at a later date. God, she hoped Ruby could take it in stride and head merrily over to that party after all of this.

“Hugs right after I pour us a couple of glasses. Better make it a good hug, you’ve got a lot to make up for.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know,” Ruby sang, plopping the cork out of the bottle with well-practiced ease, “being a total flake, for one. But mostly for not telling me all about your super secret lover.”

“Ruby! It’s not like that!”

Oh, good God. He was hearing all of this. Ruby gave her a questioning look, then closed the distance between them, wrapped her arms around her and hugged her tight. She’d missed her, and Ruby was right. Belle did have some making up to do.

“I’m just teasing,” Ruby murmured, swaying them from side to side a little bit. “I know you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

She broke the hug, quickly hung her coat on the coat stand (Rumple would approve) and went to pour two generous glasses of wine in what definitely weren’t wine glasses by any stretch of the imagination, but would do for the occasion anyway. Belle cleared her throat nervously.

“Yeah, about that,” she said, taking the glass Ruby was offering her and pausing to take a great big sip, “I’m ready now, actually.”

“Yeah?” she chirped, her grin even wider than Belle thought was possible. “So, he’s some sort of reclusive millionaire, right?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

“Too bad. A fugitive? A body pillow?”

“Ruby! Ruby, be quiet for a moment. I have to tell you something, and you have to promise you’ll listen.”

Her grin was gone, now, replaced with a furrowed brow and concerned eyes.

“Of course.”

“Come sit on the sofa with me.”

Belle glanced at the arm chair opposite. She could still feel him in the room, but she wasn’t sure that that was where he was, exactly. She hoped he was nearby. Ruby sat down next to her with that same concerned look, and Belle reached over to take her hands in hers.

“You’re going to think I’ve gone insane for the next minute or so, but I need you to hear me out, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied, making it sound more like a question than anything else.

“In a bit, you’re going to see someone… appear. Someone invisible is going to turn visible.”

The silence was unbearable. Belle could see that Ruby wanted to laugh, but that expression lasted only a few seconds until she seemed to realize that she wasn’t even remotely joking. She frowned, put her hand on Belle’s knee and softly said, “Boy, you weren’t kidding, were you? You alright, sweetie?”

This was still okay. She hadn’t expected her to believe her just like that. If their roles were reversed, Belle would probably suspect sleep deprivation or slightly more ‘exotic’ mushrooms on the pizza, too. But that didn’t matter. She’d see for herself soon enough.

“I’m fine, I promise. But you were gonna hear me out.”

“Okay, okay. I’m listening.”

“It’s my friend. The one I couldn’t tell you about.” Oh, why the hell not. She’d throw the g-word out there. “He’s a ghost. I’ll explain later. Just promise me you won’t freak out when you see him, okay?”

“A ghost? Belle…”

“Please, Ruby?”

She sighed and nodded.

“I promise.”

Disbelief in her voice, of course, but that was natural. It still didn’t matter. She would see him in a few seconds, and everything would be okay. Hopefully. God, if that man decided to buzz off in the mean time, she’d… well, she _couldn’t_ kill him, of course.

“Where should I be looking?” Ruby asked.

“Um. The chair, I think. Unless he moved.”

“… Right,” she replied, trying her very best not to sound too skeptical but failing miserably. Belle didn’t blame her one bit.

“You ready?”

“I guess.”

This was it. Was it completely insane that she had a good feeling about this? She was less terrified now, and more excited about the prospect of finally getting to introduce her best friend to her… other friend. (Some terminology issues, there, but she would have to think about that later. Now was obviously not the time.)

“You can come out now!” she said. There was a tremble in her voice, but it wasn’t from fear. It was excitement. Belle didn’t know where to look, so she looked from the chair to Ruby’s face and back again, over and over, until she saw the telltale whitish outline that told her that Rumple was on his way - thank heavens - and she could dedicate her attention entirely to Ruby.

“Holy. Crap.”

The cat didn’t get her tongue, at least, and she didn’t look horrified at all. Amazed, sure, with her eyes wide and her jaw dropped, but not frightened. Good so far. She wasn’t screaming or running for the door. That was all excellent. She was squeezing her hands rather tight, though, and it was starting to hurt. Belle looked over to Rumple and he gave her a slightly nervous smile, then looked back at Ruby, who wasn’t moving a muscle.

“Say hi!” Belle said, her voice shaking a little bit. A little more nervous than she’d thought, even though all seemed to be going well so far. “Either one of you, please… Silence’s getting kind of awkward, guys.”

“Uh. Good evening?” Rumple offered. The way he kept looking back at Belle as if for approval or orders of some sort was utterly endearing. Ruby, however, didn’t respond. She didn’t think her eyes could get any wider, but Belle had been mistaken. That almost looked painful.

“Ruby?” Belle asked, squeezing her hand gently now that her vice-like grip had lessened somewhat. Was she _really_ okay? Had she misread her entirely?

Hearing her name seemed to snap her out of her shocked state. She blinked, looked at her, slowly opened her mouth yet remained silent for a while - which gave her heart palpitations, so Belle considered their debt settled, really - until suddenly she cried, “Oh my _God_ , I’m so glad I don’t have to call your dad or an ambulance or whatever! You’re not insane!”

Belle, overcome with happiness and relief, threw herself into Ruby’s arms and nearly knocked them both off the sofa. Oh, this was amazing!

“You’re the best,” Belle sniffled, holding her tight and letting her sway their bodies from side to side the way they did before. This was a massive, intolerable weight off her shoulders, and even if Belle had been aware of the tears flowing down her face, she wouldn’t have been able to stop them. Everything would be okay, because back-up had arrived. Her best friend, shouldering the load with her. Someone to share this amazing roller coaster of an experience with. She could tell Ruby everything, now, and -

“This is very touching and I hate to interrupt, but…”

Rumple.

“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry!” Belle cried, pulling away from the emotional embrace and wiping the tears from her eyes. She was grinning from ear to ear. “Ruby, meet… uh. Well, meet Rumple.”

“Rumple?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“It’s a nickname. I’ll explain later.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay. So he’s…”

“In the room, you know,” he interrupted, his voice a low mumble.

Belle rolled her eyes. Should have figured he would put that mask of great big grumpy ghost back on for Ruby. Good thing she’d probably see right through that act the way Belle had.

“Ah. Sorry,” said Ruby, turning to face him. “So you’re a… a…”

“A ghost,” he said. “Yes.”

“Well it’s… nice to meet you. Rumple.”

Rumple stood up and moved over to where they were seated, holding out his hand to Ruby for her to shake. Ever the gentleman. All over his touch issues now, was he? Belle smiled and watched the pair of them closely, her racing heart slowing but that tingle of excitement in her belly still electric.

“Likewise, Ms…”

“Ruby’s fine.”

“Oh. Alright,” he said with a little nod. “Ruby.”

And would you look at that! On first name basis only minutes after meeting! If Belle hadn’t known any better, she might have started feeling just the teensiest bit jealous. She wasn’t, of course. This was brilliant.

He sat back down again, crossing one leg over the other and looking way more serious than he had any business being. Belle stifled a laugh, turned to Ruby and bumped her shoulder into hers.

“He likes to act grumpy sometimes cause that’s his defense mechanism,” Belle mock-whispered. “But he likes you, really. I can tell.”

“He _doesn’t_ quite like being talked about in the third person, however,” Rumple muttered.

“Then why is he doing it, too?” Belle teased.

Well, that shut him up.

Belle bit her lip and smirked. Rumple narrowed his eyes at her but soon began to answer her smirk with one of his own, his mask melting. God, he was handsome. Impossible sometimes, but handsome. Belle knew she had that thought an awful lot, but she couldn’t help it. How long was it since they kissed? Long, right? Wait, no, she’d kissed him right before she answered the door. But not _properly_.

She was a little too wrapped up in this impromptu staring contest to notice Ruby’s suspicious glances at first, but when she tore her eyes away from Rumple’s and turned back to her friend, she found that _she_ had the biggest smirk of all.

“Oh, I see what this is,” she sang, her smirk blossoming into a wolfish grin.

“What?”

“Wow, Belle. _Wow_.”

And where was Rumple off to?

“I was right, wasn’t I?” asked Ruby, pointing first at her, then at Rumple, who was bringing them their forgotten glasses. “You two are into each other!”

“Not now!” Belle half-cried and half-whispered, feeling a furious blush coming on. What was she? Twelve?

“Oh man,” she laughed, shaking her head and paying no heed to her plea for mercy. “I was gonna tell you about _my_ love life, but screw that. Yours blows mine out of the water!”

“Ruby!” she hissed.

“Alright, alright!”

Honestly! She almost wished Ruby had been a little more shocked so that at least she wouldn’t have started sniffing around for the whole truth right away. Instead she seemed tickled, casting knowing looks in both hers and Rumple’s directions, as if she was quite over the whole ghost thing and had found something a lot more interesting to figure out.

But she should have expected that. Ruby had always bounced back quick. Pizza burnt? No problem - stick it in the trash and order one. Cork screw missing? No big deal - grab a knife and push the cork down into the bottle. Best friend introduces you to a ghost? _Does she have a crush on the ghost?_

Rumple offered them both a small smile along with their glasses as if to make up for his ten seconds of attitude and said, “I figured this might help.”

“Yeah,” said Ruby, only a little hint of nerves in her voice. “I’m really glad I brought that, now.”

“Oh, Belle still has half a bottle in the refrigerator, at least,” he muttered, waving his hand in one of his elegant flourishes. “Who knows what she’s got hidden away in the cupboards.”

“Like she has the self control to have a _stash_ ,” Ruby laughed.

“Hey!” she cried. “Don’t you two start ganging up on me!”

But Belle couldn’t stop grinning. The way those two had moved from awkward greetings straight to tag-team judging was better than anything she could have hoped for. This was all she’d wanted for the past weeks, and now she’d finally gotten it, and it was working out just fine.

Ruby didn’t ask any awkward questions, luckily. She didn’t ask him how he’d died, just how old he was and what he used to do for a living. No potentially painful questions about relatives, either, and Rumple didn’t seem to mind her curiosity at all.

Belle didn’t speak all that much, except to explain a few things. She told Ruby how they met, and how Rumple had spared her from calling the cops on Gaston that night (“You’re my hero for that, man!” “It’s what anyone would have done.” “Not sure about that. I would have drawn blood and gotten in trouble.”) She asked about the nickname too, so Belle explained the whole Rumpelstiltskin thing again and mentioned his real first name - which still didn’t _feel_ like his real name. But for the most part she found herself perfectly content just sitting there watching two of her most favorite people in the world get on like a house on fire.

And sure, the occasional silences were a little bit awkward, but no more awkward than any meeting between strangers with a mutual friend. Other than that, Ruby was being her bright, bubbly self, and Rumple was being an absolute charmer, and it was fascinating to sit there and watch him interact with someone else. She’d never seen him talk to anyone but her, after all. Why did it feel so nice to sit on the sidelines and watch him?

Probably had something to do with that strange sudden awareness of reality that struck her that one time, when they both turned towards the sound of rain hitting the window and shared that oddly meaningful moment together. Belle had long since decided that Rumple was no figment of her imagination, but somehow it still felt infinitely reassuring to really, definitely know that he existed in the realities of others, too. This was like finally being given definitive proof of something she’d known for ages.

And it felt great. So she kept watching.

He was a very expressive man, and that was no news to Belle, but it was different somehow, seeing it from another perspective. Everything in moderation - subtle facial expressions, a little hand gesture here and there, all timed perfectly, whether he was speaking or listening. For a man who, in his own words, had just expanded his social circle by one hundred percent, he was doing wonderful. They were comparing lasagna recipes, now, and it was difficult to keep her mirth contained. She wanted to laugh, and laugh loudly. She wanted to hug them both at once and thank them for existing.

But that would be weird.

The three of them together weaved a curious tapestry between them with words and laughter, and it meant the world to Belle, somehow. Ever since they first spoke, Belle had sensed Rumple’s loneliness. He’d let it harden him, and it had eaten away at the softer parts of him and made him believe that he was somehow less than human. He’d tried so hard not to connect with this world, even though he was very clearly part of it, just like Belle was. And Ruby.

Taking him outside of this building had helped a bit. Finding out that his short time as a living, breathing, flesh-and-bones human being on this earth had nevertheless meant the birth of seven little great great grandchildren had helped a little bit, too. He was starting to feel things he’d convinced himself he couldn’t anymore, and maybe now that he knew there was someone else out there who knew of him, who had seen him, who _liked_ him, he would feel even more connected. Spread out, like Belle was. Like anyone else. Connecting.

Every once in a while, when a silence bubbled up, Rumple would look at her with a hint of doubt in his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure that he was doing alright. She would smile and hope the warmth and happiness she felt were visible in that little gesture. If not, she’d have to make it abundantly clear later just how happy he’d made her tonight.

Yeah. Tonight.

In the calm seas of another lull in the conversation, Ruby sighed, “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to leave you guys to it,” and stood up. Rumple shot up from his chair, of course, because his desire to seem a bit distant and aloof didn’t trump his desire to adhere to propriety. It was one of those things Belle adored about him - the occasional little inner conflict of interests to make him look like a confused dog for a few seconds until one wish won out and dictated his actions. She liked to imagine two little Rumples up in that brain of his, fighting over who gets the remote control.

“Your party,” said Belle, following Ruby to the door, where she slipped into her coat.

“Yeah. Sounds boring now, compared to hanging out with you two.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she replied. “We’re probably just going to play Scrabble.”

“Oh!” cried Ruby, turning to face Rumple with that great big grin of hers. “Please tell me you’ve beaten her at that damn game. She needs to be taken down a peg or two.”

“Ah, unfortunately, I have not,” he chuckled. “I will keep trying, though.”

“You do that. Someone has to beat her eventually.”

“We’ll see,” Belle said, smirking as she opened the door for Ruby. “I’ll walk you out.”

Rumple followed them to the door with a small, shy smile. Even though Ruby was leaving, he still cast her that questioning glance to make sure that he wasn’t messing things up, which had been slowly melting Belle down to a puddle of pure and utter adoration. He really had no clue what he did to her, did he? Maybe tonight she could finally show him.

“Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Rumple.”

“You too, Ruby.”

How sweet. How unbearably sweet. Her fingers itched to touch him already.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” she said softly, reaching out to squeeze his arm before following Ruby out of the door.

Their footsteps sounded hollow on the staircase, and she realized that she was practically running, so she forced herself to slow down and let Ruby catch up. She couldn’t help it. Her entire body was energized, her mind was whirring, she couldn’t stop grinning and she felt so incredibly happy.

She’d kiss him when she got back up there. Kiss him senseless. Drag him down onto the sofa and kiss him until she got the courage to -

“So. This is… huge.”

What? Oh. They were at the front door already. Her mind was headed elsewhere for a moment, and apparently it was obvious, because Ruby gave her a concerned look, her big eyes scanning her face for her mood.

“I know,” Belle said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“No, no, I get why you waited. But do you wanna maybe talk about this soon? Alone?”

“I’d like that. But what about you? Are you alright, Rubes?”

“Yeah,” Ruby sighed with a small smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth. “He’s not, you know, _scary_.”

“That’s what I told him!” Belle cried, giggling. “I meant are you okay with the whole ghost thing on a bigger level? You’re, uh… remarkably cool about it.”

Ruby chuckled, shrugged and mused, “It’s like we talked about back when you were still sneaking around with the guy.”

“Don’t put it like that!”

“I mean, when you asked me if I believed in ghosts and I said I might if I believed I’d seen one.”

“Oh, right.”

“And now I met one, it’s not that big a deal, I guess. So there’s at least one ghost in the world. So what? Doesn’t really change much in the grand scheme of things, does it?”

Well, perhaps not for Ruby. It had changed _everything_ for Belle. Her entire idea of the future had changed since she’d fallen for him. It was him, now. All she could see was him. And a bunch of published books, of course, and a pile of money when she sold the movie rights, but she couldn’t picture any of that without him right there to beat at Scrabble, to kiss, to cuddle, to talk to. She just couldn’t anymore. She’d fallen too fast and too hard for that.

“You can’t tell anyone,” said Belle, lightly touching Ruby’s arm as if to emphasize the importance of what she was saying.

“I know! Don’t worry about that.”

“I know it’s a lot to deal with, and it’s unfair of me to ask you to keep everything to yourself, but I just… I really needed you.”

“Sweetie, that’s what I’m here for,” Ruby cooed, wrapping her arms around her for another hug. Belle melted into the embrace with a deep, shaky sigh. “I just wish you told me sooner. This is some serious stuff. Especially if you’re as… well, if you’re in as much trouble as I think you are.”

There was something trying to make its way up her throat, and Belle swallowed to keep it down. And now whatever it was, it was trying to sneak out through her tear ducts and making quite a fuss in her belly, and she couldn’t speak - only nod as she pulled away from Ruby’s embrace and looked down at her feet.

Yeah. She was in trouble. A whole lot of it, in fact, and Belle wasn’t even done digging yet.

“I’ll text you,” Belle said, offering Ruby her bravest smile. She nodded, sighed and walked out of the building, waving one last time before letting the door fall shut behind her. So there Belle stood; all alone, holding a whole bunch of strange feelings close to her chest like a tangled mess of yarn, each thread a different color, each color evoking a different feeling and leading to a different set of possible actions and decisions.

But not one of them led anywhere but back up to her apartment, where Rumple was waiting for her to return. Her Rumple, whose own very existence was his precious secret, a secret which he’d let her share because he knew how much she needed to.

Tonight had given her hope. It had made her happy. It had made her bolder, more dangerous, too. Her heart was beating a steady rhythm in her chest, like a war drum.

He was still standing more or less where she’d left him, rubbing his fingers together nervously, his eyebrows raised a little bit and his lips slightly parted. Belle closed the door behind her and leaned against it with a smile, just watching him for a moment.

“How was I?” he asked.

She flew into his arms and kissed his cheek over and over again until he laughed and stilled her face in his strong hands. A whispered “Thank you,” was all she could manage in the spotlight of his gaze, with his lips so near her own and her heart screaming at her to drag him into her bed and devour him. Maybe the intensity of her feelings shone through, because Belle saw him swallow and draw in his lip in that nervous manner of his. Were his hands trembling against her cheeks?

“S-Shall I get the game set up?”

Oh. Right. She’d mentioned Scrabble. But she had no intentions of playing that tonight. Belle shook her head and stood on her tip toes so she could fit their lips together and kiss him. His hands fell from her face to her shoulders. Not gripping. Just resting. As if he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“Television?” he tried.

Belle smiled and shook her head again. She didn’t bother standing on her toes this time, she merely reached up and guided his face down to hers so she could kiss him without straining quite so much. Should have worn heels. He kissed her back this time. He knew what she wanted, didn’t he? Then why was he still pretending?

“Oh. Oh, alright,” he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “A book you need to finish?”

She shook her head one more time and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him again, catching his bottom lip. He made a soft sound and snaked his arms around her waist. She wished he’d pull her closer and push things further, but he wouldn’t. Belle knew that. She’d have to do it herself.

So with her belly burning and her heart still beating that war drum, Belle brushed her tongue against his upper lip for just a second, then kissed him again like they’d done so many times before, as if nothing had happened. Just to see what he’d do. And if she’d surprised him, he wasn’t showing it, but his arms were a little tighter around her waist, now. It only encouraged her to try that again.

And this time, his lips parted for her, and one of his hands slid up her back and into her hair, and there was his tongue against hers, making her knees want to buckle and her arms wrap around him tighter so she could get him closer, _closer_ , as close as he could possibly be. He stopped her when she’d lunged like a drunken idiot last night, but not now. How was he making her feel this way? How could she be so hungry for someone she hadn’t even known all that long? How had he managed to snake around her heart like a golden wire, squeezing and pulling her towards him, driving her absolutely insane for his touch?

No, she didn’t have to kiss any other 19th or 20th century men to know that Rumple didn’t kiss like one. This was too promising for someone who stood whenever a woman did, who refused to sit down until Belle had, who had shied away from even her more innocent touches until recently. He wasn’t shy about this. Not at all.

Was it strange? No, not really. When her tongue first ventured into his mouth, it was just a little bit curious that it didn’t feel wet at all. She supposed it made sense that Rumple didn’t produce any saliva. But it felt smooth, and she began to suspect that the more they kissed and the deeper they kissed, the wetter she got _him_. Yeah, so maybe that was strange, but not strange enough to drown out the thrum in her chest that sank down further and further until it pooled low in her belly, and when his fingers gripped her hair and tilted her head so he could kiss her even more thoroughly, that heat dropped straight down between her legs with a suddenness that made her mewl into his mouth.

She pulled back so she could latch onto his neck the way he hadn’t let her the other night. She kissed, licked, nipped at him and pushed herself closer, closer until she had him backed into a wall. The beat her heart was drumming stopped when Belle realized that if Rumple had been hard, she would have noticed it, all over him as she was. But he wasn’t. He just…

“Belle,” he murmured softly, his fingers under her chin tilting her head up so he could look at her. “I’m sorry.”

She stepped back, took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts, which mostly consisted of the word ‘no.’ As in, no, she wouldn’t accept that. There was nothing for Rumple to be sorry about, for one, and this wasn’t over yet. He looked guilty, somehow; his arms limp at his sides, palms facing her as if he was about to apologize again. Belle shook her head before he could do that.

“Don’t go back up to the attic tonight,” she said, her voice a little more shaky than she thought it would be. “Stay with me.”

“To sleep.”

“Eventually,” she murmured.

“Belle, I can’t.”

“Let’s at least talk about it.”

Rumple sighed and turned away from her, shaking his head and digging his fingers into his hair. She didn’t want to push him, but…

“Rumple, it’s okay. Whatever happens, whatever we do or don’t do, I’ll still -”

She almost said out loud something she hadn’t even admitted to herself yet. She swallowed the words down and walked up to him, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. She could see her arms through him, just a little bit. Strange, sure. Another strange thing. Again, not strange enough to make her want him any less desperately. She kissed his shoulder.

“I just want to try. I know it’s only been three weeks since we met, but -”

“Not even that,” he mumbled. Belle sensed a hint of amusement in his voice. Maybe she could draw that out a bit more and make the whole thing feel less serious. Take the pressure off. Ease themselves in.

“Alright, I’m easy, point taken,” she teased, grinning when she felt his body shake a little bit with silent laughter.

He pried her grip on his waist loose, but only so he could turn around and give her a faint smile, murmuring, “It’s not that I don’t want to, because I do. How could I not? You’re stunning. Absolutely, ridiculously beautiful. I’ve been on this earth for well over a century, and I’ve never seen anyone…”

He trailed off and sighed with a little melancholy smile. “You know.”

She did. But he’d never really said that out loud, had he? Belle found herself blushing and smiling as if no-one had ever called her that before. The words had lost meaning. She’d heard so many cat calls and clumsy pick-up lines, so many uninspired adjectives to describe her eyes, so many bloody synonyms for blue and comparisons to whichever body of water the man or woman in question had last read about in who knows what magic realism novel was all the rage these days, but when _he_ said it… Well.

“I want to,” he repeated. “It’s not your fault. I just… I can’t, Belle. I physically can’t. I thought you knew that.”

Belle sighed and bit her lip. She could read his eyes, and she knew that he really, honestly thought that that was the truth. But that didn’t mean that he was right, did it? She wasn’t going to give up just like that. Not without trying. Not when she knew she had a way of getting through to him.

“I uh,” he continued, his voice softer and deeper now, his eyes drifting from her eyes to the floor shyly, “I could… touch you, if that’s what you want. I want to, and I could. But I can’t… you know.”

Touch her? Of course she wanted him to touch her - which was evident from the little rush of heat those words had sent straight down between her legs - but not _just_ that. It wasn’t about that. Wasn’t about her. It was about them, and Belle was still not giving up.

“That’s not what I want,” she said, stepping closer and taking his hands in hers. “Not all I want.”

“Then I can’t give you what you want,” he muttered, glancing up at her with his beautiful but uncertain eyes.

“I think you can.”

“Belle,” he said, only just managing to stifle a bitter laugh. “I hate to get technical because I’m already extremely embarrassed, but I… don’t have blood.”

_Technical_ , really. God, this man. He waited a beat then raised a single eyebrow to see if she’d caught his meaning, and Belle giggled softly, shaking her head. Who cared? There was no point in applying conventional knowledge of human anatomy to a man whose very existence defied the laws of physics as they knew them.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, shrugging, letting go of one hand but tugging on the other as she moved around the room, switching all the downstairs lights off.

“Your relentless optimism is admirable, but wasted in this particular situation. And what are you doing?”

“Turning off the lights. You don’t have a larynx either, remember? I still hear your voice.”

“That’s different.”

She snorted and started making her way up the ladder to the mezzanine, where her string lights glowed like oversized fireflies and cast a warm, cosy light on everything.

“Belle?”

“Come up!” she called down to him, switching on the lamp on her bedside table. “We’ll talk up here!”

Was that too bold of her? It seemed it wasn’t, because up he came, not quite meeting her gaze but not looking entirely as nervous as he did before. So Belle sat down cross-legged in the middle of the bed and patted the space in front of her. He sighed and joined her, cross-legged as well.

“I’ve figured you out, Rumple.”

“Excuse me?”

She poked his knee and cheerily repeated, “I’ve figured you out! You felt that, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“So you feel pressure. I think you’ve always felt pressure, because if you hadn’t, you’d just let everything drop to the floor or grip too hard and break things. No spaghetti, no lasagna, no Scrabble.”

“Alright, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“And you see me. You hear me, too.”

“Obviously,” he muttered, giving her a skeptical look. He could grumble all he wanted, but he wasn’t scaring her away just yet.

“You’ve always had those senses. And a while ago, you told me you didn’t feel warmth. But you do now, don’t you?”

Rumple was silent for a while, looking down at his hands folded in his lap.

“Yes.”

“Why did that change?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled with a shrug.

Belle sighed. Not exactly the answer she was looking for.

“I think I reminded you. Of what warmth felt like, I mean. I think you forgot, just like you forgot how sensitive lips are.”

She paused and slowly reached out to place a single fingertip at the corner of his mouth. He watched her curiously, brow still furrowed, but he let her ever so faintly slide her finger over his bottom lip, just lightly enough to tickle. His eyes widened just a little bit, and he was quick to hide it, but Belle knew he hadn’t just felt pressure then. He couldn’t fool her. But maybe he didn’t want to anymore. She decided to just ask.

“That felt nice, didn’t it?” she asked, letting her hand drop to his knee and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Not just pressure, right?”

And that was it, really. That was what Belle knew she could for him. She spoke those parts of him that he’d forced down back into existence and made him feel things again. She said it, he thought it, he felt it. He was a mind first and foremost, after all. He was thought and energy, and he responded to her words because he’d let her in at some point - probably very early on, even. He believed her, even if he didn’t think he did. If she could just tell him all of the things he’d forgotten, he would be able to feel them all again, Belle was sure of it.

“Tickles,” he said softly.

“I can remind you of everything else.”

While the silence was more than a little tense, Belle wasn’t worried. He didn’t look guilty anymore. He didn’t look like she was scaring the hell out of him, either. He just watched her, the worry slowly falling from his handsome face. And then he moved closer, to kiss the corner of her mouth.

But she needed to ask.

“So can we try?” she spoke against his lips, tangling her fingers in the hair at his nape. “Will you let me try?”

“Yes,” he whispered right before his lips crashed into hers and she wrapped her arms around his neck again so she could fall back on the bed and pull him on top of her.

Finally. _Finally_. They were a mess of tangled limbs and wet kisses, and it took her all of her self control not to simply buck up against him and demand he do something about that intense heat he’d conjured up with his lips and his tongue and his fingers and his voice.

But it seemed she didn’t have to. His hands were everywhere - one under her back, slipping up her t-shirt in a sudden bold move she hadn’t anticipated, making her arch up into him. The other was moving slowly up her thigh, to her hip, where it lingered and squeezed for a little while before joining the other one under her shirt, pushing it up.

Belle raised her arms up over her head, hoping he’d know to just pull the damn thing off already so she could feel him on her bare skin, which to her utter delight, he did. It landed somewhere on top of a pile of books. Whatever. She just pulled him right back down on top of her again and gasped when his lips found her neck and kissed her over and over.

Which only made that urgent, pulsing heat get a thousand times more intense. So she blindly grasped for one of his hands until she found it, then guided it down over her belly until their interlaced fingers reached the waistband of her jeans. He pulled away from her neck for a moment and gave her a look she couldn’t quite read.

“You still okay?” she asked.

His eyes were so incredibly dark in this light, full of obvious desire, but caution, too. God, he needed to let go already. If this was really what he wanted, why didn’t he - oh. His hand slipped further down over the fabric of her jeans, making her gasp into his kiss and buck her hips up because finally she had pressure where she needed it. _Him_ where she needed him. She didn’t care about her shameless moan, and she suspected he didn’t either. He just kissed every bit of skin he could reach, now, until Belle realized that she hadn’t seen nearly enough of his. She pushed his head up from her chest and her hands flew up to the buttons of his shirt, but she couldn’t seem to get them undone. Press buttons? Shaky fingers? Both?

“Sweetheart,” he murmured. That word again. She stopped and looked up at him. He smiled and continued, “That’s not going to work.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a real shirt. You can’t take it off.”

“But you can, yeah?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course I do!” she said, laughing under her breath. He grinned shyly and shrugged, muttering, “Just making sure.”

“Just lose the shirt, Rumple,” she giggled.

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just for a moment, Belle.”

Alright. She could do that, if that made him more comfortable. With her eyes closed, Belle heard a lot of rustling which told her that he was probably getting under the sheets, and when his lips at her ear told her to open them again, she found him right next to her, on his side, looking a little too vulnerable for her to bear. The shirt was gone, and he just… looked normal. A man. Perfect.

But that nervous look in his eyes needed to be remedied, so Belle sat up on her knees, unhooked her bra and threw it over her shoulder, hoping it would land somewhere near her t-shirt. If he was staring, she didn’t know and she didn’t care, cause she was too busy trying to get a good look at him.

… Well, no, she did care a bit. She tore away her eyes from the little patch of hair over his chest trailing down to his belly button and caught him frantically trying to hide the fact that he had, in fact, been staring at her breasts by staring fixedly at her face with wide eyes instead. Belle tried to bite down on her grin, but it was pointless. He was too cute.

“It’s alright,” she soothed, a hint of laughter in her voice. His expression softened to a slightly embarrassed grin, and he shrugged. But he still looked a little shy, so she gently pushed his shoulder to make him lie on his back, and leaned over him so she could kiss his clavicle.

No scar over his heart. She hadn’t seen his arms before either, had she? Belle splayed her hand on his chest and just stared for a moment. That urgent, boiling sea inside of her had stilled, which was a good thing. She didn’t want to overwhelm him, and she knew he could just take her right back to that point anyway, with just a kiss, or a touch, or a stare. His trousers were gone, too. She could tell, because she saw his hipbone jutting out where before there was fabric - or what looked like fabric. She wanted to pull the sheets away from his body completely, but she knew he wouldn’t be comfortable like that. She needed him at ease, and slow was good.

“Staring again.”

“I know,” she said, kissing the spot where she thought his scar would have been, then moving up his neck and finally to his lips. “Can’t help it. You’re gorgeous.”

“Hush, you,” he said. She nestled herself in his arm with her head on his chest and let her fingertips breeze over his skin. Skin… It did feel like skin. It was smoother, maybe, but it wasn’t strange. His chest moved up and down as he breathed. That was curious. He didn’t need to breathe, did he? But Belle liked it. It was intimate.

“You can tell me to stop,” she murmured, pausing the journey her hand was making in the middle of his chest. He kissed the top of her head.

“I know.”

And she didn’t realize she’d stopped breathing for a moment until those two softly spoken words fell from his lips and she released a breath.

“For me,” she said, scratching the skin just underneath his collarbone very lightly, “that skin right above the waistband,” she slid her hand lower, “is really sensitive.”

She kissed his neck, then lightly scraped her teeth against his ghostly skin. “Almost ticklish. Makes me want to jump away, almost.”

Her fingers fluttered over his belly, now, and the lower she went, the more it felt as if there were muscles twitching under skin. Belle felt her heart beat just a little bit faster, because that must have meant it was working. It had to have been working for him to have this kind of reaction.

“Don’t you think?” she murmured.

The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. All he needed was someone to tell him it was possible, to describe the feelings and make him remember that way. Belle could do that, with her treasure chest full of words, and with a little bit of help from Rumple in the form of, well, his attention, she supposed. So she let her fingers stray lower still, until they disappeared under the sheets by just an inch, and she heard him make a soft noise in his throat. She leaned up on her elbow so she could look at him and found his eyes closed and his lips slightly parted, so she softly kissed his lips again. When she pulled back, he’d opened his eyes and was staring at her.

Just stared.

And she was paralyzed. Couldn’t move a muscle. Not even those fingers that were poised to drift lower and disappear under the sheets. Nothing.

“You’re unreal,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her down on top of him with a soft groan. Belle gasped, but soon found her mouth too busy being kissed to really express her surprise any further and her mind way the fuck elsewhere anyway, because when she let herself fall on top of him and into his embrace, she suddenly realized that he was getting hard against her thigh, and even though she’d always known, she’d just _known_ that she was right about this, it was still something of a shock. Belle tried not to grin, but she was too pleased, too excited, too ridiculously happy, and she couldn’t control herself much at all, now.

“You can’t possibly be real,” he murmured against the skin of her neck, his voice deep, threading his fingers through her hair and pulling it to the side to find more skin to kiss. That was rich coming from him, but she didn’t care, cause he was making her breathe heavy again, and she felt an all-consuming urge to get those damn jeans off right now before she set fire to them somehow.

“You just needed someone to remind you.”

“No. Just you,” he growled.

But he wasn’t letting go. His arms were tight around her, her breasts pushed up against his chest, his lips making her fingers shake as she tried to reach between their bodies to at least unbutton the wretched thing so she could get his hand in there.

“Rumple. Jeans,” she breathed, and before she knew it he’d rolled them over, straddled her thighs and pushed her hands out of the way to unbutton them with a surprising ease. But, ah - he obviously hadn’t realized how tight they were, because he had some trouble tugging them down over her hips. Belle giggled and lifted her hips to help, which made him laugh, too, until finally he got them all the way down and off, taking her socks with them and he just sat there looking at her for a strange, frozen moment. His eyes drifted from hers, to her breasts, down her belly, to the very unimpressive cotton panties she’d worn that day. If she’d known…

But suddenly, Belle realized that she could see all of him, now. Normal. Gorgeous. Human. Just a man, despite all of his protests. Quickly, before he realized that she was staring and got shy again, Belle pulled down her panties and shimmied out of them, leaving her completely bare to his gaze. Only fair, right?

“C’mere,” she said, holding out her hand with a smile. He blinked at her, and for a second, Belle feared that he was getting doubts again. But oh, she was so incredibly wrong, and so incredibly glad about it, too, because he took her hand and lunged, pushing it down into the pillow next to her head, using his other hand to grasp at her thigh in a way that made her hook her leg around his instinctively.

He was pressing against her, hard against her hip, the hand he’d used to hold hers now snaking between their bodies, his lips driving her mad right below her ear. She clamped her thighs around his hand, moaned when he did exactly what she’d been wanting him to do for what felt like a bloody eternity, but grabbed and pulled his hand back when she realized that he could very well make her come like that if she didn’t stop him right then.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, scanning her face for a hint of pain. Belle refused to let go of his hand in case he thought that he should pull away entirely.

“No,” she said, moving the one leg that wasn’t hooked over his so he was lying in between her thighs. She kept her eyes glued to his, offered a reassuring smile and explained, “You were just a little bit too good at that, and I didn’t want to come just yet. Not like that.”

He stared at her as if somehow she’d managed to shock him again, but she couldn’t have, right? Was that a strange thing to say?

“Oh.”

Well, ‘oh’ was alright, she supposed. Slowly, she reached down, took him in her hand for the first time (again, he felt so incredibly normal it almost surprised her) and guided him. Birth control wouldn’t be an issue - a little pro she hadn’t thought of yet. Better not bring it up. Didn’t want to break the spell she seemed to have cast over him, the way he was just absolutely unable to look anywhere but her eyes.

“Sure?” he managed, his tongue flitting out over his lips. Belle tilted her head up and gave him a quick kiss before answering, “Sure.”

She felt him slide in - careful, maddening, slow. His dark eyes flitted over her face for signs of discomfort, but there was none of that. She was ready for him. Had been for a while.

“You alright?”

“Perfect,” she said, smiling up at him. She loved the sight of those beautiful brown eyes moving all over her face with such adoration and concern, but right now, she didn’t want him to worry; she wanted him to feel. So she reached up, dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him down for another kiss.

“How does it feel?” she asked, murmuring softly against his parted lips.

He didn’t answer, but he moved now. Slowly. Steadily.

“Warm?”

He nodded. Belle reached up, ran her fingers through his hair at the back of his head and guided his head down to where her shoulder met her neck, hoping that this way, he would focus on his own pleasure. Not hers.

“Good?”

Nothing. Well, alright. He didn’t have to answer. He just needed to listen.

“It feels really good for me,” she tried. She couldn’t exactly tell him what it should feel like for him, right? So this would have to do. She didn’t feel awkward about it at all, somehow. Not with him. Not with Rumple.

“Feels like this warm, tingly pressure. Building up. And the way you’re moving so slow is making it really intense.”

It was difficult to breathe and whisper and really properly feel all of these feelings at the same time - he was still driving her absolutely insane kissing and biting her neck, too - but Belle could feel that it was working. That her words were reminding him what this should feel like.

“And I don’t know what it feels like for you - ”

She had to stop and bite her lip to stifle a moan when he pushed in deeper and held still.

“ - to be inside of me, but it’s good, right?”

She would have liked to see his face for a moment so she could read it and see what he was thinking, but his lips on her shoulder and his teeth grazing her skin there felt so incredibly good that she found herself digging her fingers in the hair at his nape and pulling him even closer instead.

“Hot?”

The deep growl right next to her ear made her moan softly in response. Her legs wrapped themselves around him on their own accord, trapping him tight, trying to pull him even deeper, or to make him move, or just _anything_. She wanted to talk him through this, but it felt too good to think clearly, let alone speak in full sentences.

“Please,” she breathed. “Please.”

Another growl, and he was moving again, slowly unraveling her thread of sanity, but she wasn’t done talking to him yet. He wasn’t convinced yet, she knew it. So Belle tried, even though he was pushing her closer to the brink, stealing her breath away. She whimpered breathlessly in his ear for a while, grabbed his shoulders, grasped at his back, mindlessly murmured about the heat, and the pressure, and the wetness, and the need for more, and how deep he was, and when she heard his soft groan and felt him speed up, Belle knew it was okay for her to let go and let the wave of pleasure well up unchecked.

Her string lights flickered, but she barely noticed it, nor did she care much. She clenched her eyes shut to focus on the feeling. He was getting warmer. _All_ of him was. It wasn’t just that abstract figurative heat; he was warm and getting warmer. Intense, but not frightening. Hot, but not too hot, and it was making the pleasure so much more overpowering that her body trembled under his as she helplessly grabbed at his hair with one hand and reached between their bodies with the other to bring herself over the edge.

She came so hard she couldn’t even make a sound. Just shake. Grab. Bite her lip so hard she had to force herself to stop before she bit a hole in it. She was just gone, there, for a moment. Helpless, boneless, thoughtless.

But he’d stopped. Why had he stopped?

Even with her eyes clenched shut she could tell that he was glowing again, as he had in the library. Belle opened her eyes and found him staring at her, seemingly mesmerized. If only he knew the picture he made with that faint, warm glow and his adoring eyes. She wasn’t going to point it out, though. He’d only worry. And he hadn’t come yet, but Belle knew that he could. His breathing was too labored, his movements too _real_. Something was happening to him. He was _feeling_.

“Keep going,” she breathed, reaching up to stroke his cheek, smiling when he blinked as if that woke him up from a trance. “You can do this.”

He kissed her. Deep. Their tongues together, her teeth nipping his lip. And then he started up again, steady until the lamp next to her bed buzzed and flickered, and he began to move faster. Belle hoped he wasn’t noticing any of that. She just held him close, let him move however he wanted, whispered little encouragements in his ear. After a while, he murmured her name and buried himself deep inside of her, holding himself there, and the lamp finally broke with a sudden fizzle and a crack, leaving them with just the string lights for illumination.

Yeah. He’d probably noticed that.

And that glow hadn’t faded out completely, either. Did he know? Her arms hurt a little bit from holding him so tight for so long, but he was making no moves to roll off of her, so she didn’t let go just yet.

“Rumple?”

He didn’t answer, but he did kiss her shoulder.

“You’re unreal,” he whispered once more, pulling away from her embrace for just a moment so he could shift to lie on his side again, looking at her as if he really meant what he’d said several times now and was trying to figure her out like one of those strange, psychedelic optical illusions.

“I’m as real as you are,” she replied, wriggling closer to him so she could gently bump her nose against his. She was comfortable here, smiling at her ghost, but they were both naked and she was getting cold, so she reached down for her blankets and pulled them up over the both of them.

Cuddled up close again, Belle took his hand in hers, brought it up to his face, grinned and said, “You’re still glowing a little bit.” God, she hoped this wouldn’t send him spiraling into another one of his self-loathing moods. It was cute. Charming. He fit right in with her mood lighting, which thought made her want to giggle, so she bit her lip to contain herself until she knew for sure that he was alright.

“Oh. I see what you mean, now.”

He looked at his fingers, his hand, his wrist, his arm, all still glowing a little bit but steadily dying down. He was frowning, but not in a sad or disgusted way. Just curious, it seemed like. Confused, perhaps.

“I love it,” Belle said, and she kissed the back of his hand to make absolutely sure he knew she meant it. He sighed and offered her a half smile, moved some stray locks of hair away from her face, then draped his arm over her waist underneath the covers.

“Sorry about your lamp. If that was me.”

“I think it might have been,” she giggled. “But don’t worry about it. I’m flattered.”

He laughed softly, crinkling his nose in the most adorable way, and it pulled at that wire strung between their hearts and made her wriggle even closer, her hand on his shoulder, their legs tangling. The hand at her waist came up to guide her head under his chin, and she sighed. Yes, this was perfect. Tucked up and warm. Safe in each other’s arms in the eye of the storm.

“Belle?”

“Hm?”

“Was that alright?”

“It was wonderful,” she replied without missing a beat. “Don’t you think?”

A silent chuckle. She could feel it. His chest moved, his shoulders shook, his adam’s apple bobbed, and he murmured, “Wonderful will have to do until I find a better word.”

“If there is one, I bet I could find it before you do,” Belle teased, grinning into his chest and making him laugh again, out loud this time.

“Ruby’s right. I do have to beat you at that bloody game soon. You’re getting cocky.”

More soft laughter. Soft light. Soft sheets and limbs, lips and hair, words and touches. Everything was softness, now; no sharp edges to be found. Belle knew that it would be incredibly easy for her to fall asleep like this, but she didn’t want to just yet. If she slept, she would wake up and the moment would be gone, so she clung to Rumple as if to the moment, couldn’t even stand the thought of a single inch of space between them. She would stay awake, and she would nurse this moment and stop the sun from rising. That was ridiculous, she knew, but she had to somehow, because if the sun rose and cast its pale morning light on them, it would bring with it those pale thoughts, and those always cut deep.

No sharp things. No pale things. Softness and warm light. That was what they needed.

So no, Belle wouldn’t sleep. No matter how warm, and important, and safe, and incredibly loved she felt here in his arms. No matter how deep and soft his voice was as he told her that he wouldn’t leave her, that he would be here when she woke up. No matter how heavy her eyelids and sleepy her tired, sated little heart, filled with Rumple’s soft glow and radiating warmth.

“Sleep, sweetheart.”

Oh, no. She didn’t stand a chance, now.

“Tell me we’ll be alright.”

He kissed the top of her head.

“We’ll be alright.”

She closed her eyes and slept.


	14. How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long night, a lull in the battle, a stay of execution, a temporary fix. And scrambled eggs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know about you guys, but I sure could use a break from Rumple’s inconvenient and quite honestly exhausting pessimism/realism.
> 
> Chapter title shamelessly stolen from [this song by Bombay Bicycle Club](http://youtu.be/YOC1V04dzfo), but it's not important. Just avoiding plagiarism over here. Carry on.

Decades of numbness, and now pins and needles all over. He didn’t tell Belle about it, because she looked as if she was about to tumble and plunge headfirst into a deep pool of sleep, and he was right. He had his arms full of her sleeping body, her dreaming head tucked snug under his chin. If he’d thought there was any chance of him falling asleep and joining her with those strange prickling waves of sensation traveling from the top of his head down to his feet every few seconds or so, he would have tried. But he couldn’t. The way it almost felt electric made him wonder if Belle felt it too where her skin touched his ghostly form, but either there was nothing electric about it, or he just wasn’t conductive at all, because she seemed completely unaware. Good thing.

The crawling pinpricks made him want to toss and turn in the hopes that that might make the feelings go away before they made him lose focus and he lost the ability to stay touchable for her sake. He couldn’t do that without waking her up, however, which meant that Belle was blissfully unaware that she was keeping him a tortured prisoner in her embrace. The sweetest torture he could possibly imagine. If he could see her look at him, or if she spoke to him, listened to him - just have her notice him, really - he could concentrate on keeping himself together. He knew he was losing definition, fading out a bit. The sensations were too strong. It was unpleasant, and getting worse. Almost painful.

It started not too long after she’d made the impossible happen and made him come undone in her arms, deep inside of her, hot and mindless. She’d made him come, somehow - him whose nervous system had rotted away decades ago. That’s when it started up. It felt like the ringing in your ears after a loud, nearby bang sounded. Like a church bell struck once sends out its hollow sound through the cold morning air until the waves lose strength, only to be struck once more. From the top of his head down to his toes. Over and over again. Pleasant at first, but getting stronger and stronger. Beginning to scare him, beating at his armor, tearing his mind’s filters down and exposing him to wave after wave of sensory overload. He felt himself getting thinner in the air, spread much too thin between each and every little impulse, to the point where he was scared he couldn’t keep up his solidity and hold her anymore.

He needed his anchor, but he didn’t want to wake her, so he waited. He’d been waiting for some time now; braving the waves, letting them push him under, floundering back up, ready to take another hit. He was clinging to her so tight he was actually a little worried about accidentally waking her up that way, but she snoozed on unaware. The sun wasn’t going to rise any time soon. She hadn’t set her alarm at all. He _needed_ to wake her, but if he did that, and if he told her, then she would feel responsible, and that was something he could never allow. He just had to hold on, that’s all. He didn’t have to stay visible as long as she was asleep, so he diverted that energy to keeping up the physical aspect of him, so that she wouldn’t fall right through him and wake up anywhere but right there in his arms, the way he’d promised.

Breathing warm, a little bit of softness for him to focus on when the waves of needles hit hardest, Belle slept until for some reason, she didn’t anymore. A soft sleepy groan, slow, wriggly movements under his chin, and then her lips whispering his name against his chest, asking him if he was awake. His siren, calling him back to the ship he’d already wrecked, guiding him to his useless bits of driftwood for him to cling to and keep himself afloat, calming the sea with just a single whispered word. He was saved. He could focus.

“You should go back to sleep,” he said, making himself visible again. _But please don’t_. She shifted and moved up a little bit so he could see her bright eyes, wide awake, and he let her kiss his objections right from his lips. Oh, yes. Saved.

“I slept,” she murmured. “And now I’m awake.”

“But it’s still dark out.”

“I’m glad. Were you up?”

“Yes.”

“Thinking sad things?” she asked, trailing a finger from his temple to his jaw.

“No.”

He hadn’t been thinking much of anything at all. Nothing coherent. Nothing she could possibly imagine. Just that mild panic and those waves in the sea of pins and needles she’d pulled him out of simply by looking at him.

Now that his entire body had stopped burning, it was starting to make sense. Of course his mind’s filters had thrown up their hands and left him to his devices; she’d made him think he’d _come_. They were trying their best to make sense of something that was, essentially, completely impossible, and they simply crumbled and gave up. His mind was just trying to adjust to the fact that he could feel pleasure, now, and misfired. Like blood rushing back after circulation had been cut off. Simple as that. Probably wouldn’t happen again.

“Honestly?” she asked.

“Honestly.”

Belle narrowed her eyes and pored over his face like two pages of a book with an unreliable narrator, but she soon saw that he hadn’t lied - not this time - and her harsh, skeptical look softened to something a little more pleased. He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose, making her wrinkle it cutely. Slowly, they disentangled so that there was a little bit of space between them. He lay on his back, she on her side. Her hand found his chest. Her palm right where his heart ought to have been.

“You don’t have a scar,” she said.

“Did you think I’d have one?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn’t. You didn’t know at the time, right?”

“Mm. And I don’t mean to be morbid, sweetheart, but if I _had_ been aware that I’d been shot, I don’t think any physical representation of that knowledge would have been a scar, exactly. Wouldn’t have healed.”

She blinked a few times, frowned and in a deep voice mumbled, “That is morbid.”

He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it.

“Sorry.”

“’s Alright. I brought it up.”

“I didn’t have to take it there.”

“It’s okay.”

Her smile was a sight to get lost in. What had they been talking about again? Oh. Scars. Or the lack of one.

“This one,” he sighed, holding up his arm and pointing at a paler spot of skin on his forearm, “I do remember.”

Belle put a dainty finger right on the small, almost triangular scar and gave him him a questioning look, waiting for him to explain.

“Fishing with Neal, back home. He’d seen someone fly fishing the day before, and he thought he’d give it a try while his old da wasn’t paying attention. Nearly had my eye out.”

“Caught himself a big, screaming fish, did he?” she laughed.

“Oh, yes. The hook got stuck in my arm, right here, and when I pulled back in shock, it took a bit of skin with it.”

She gasped, making him want to kiss her dramatic, gloriously expressive little face all over.

“Did Neal freak out?” she asked.

He shook his head. “He gave me a towel and a hug and said he was very, very sorry, and that he’d never do it again. He was about eight, I think. I was just happy I hadn’t traumatized him.”

Belle giggled and just stared at him for a moment, deep in thought and smiling absently until suddenly she rounded her lips in a silent ‘Oh!’ and pushed the covers away from her naked body. God. She really was stunning. And she didn’t have an ounce of shyness about her when it came to her body, did she? She pointed at a spot on the right side of her abdomen. He sat up, the sheets pooling at his waist, and had a closer look. Why didn’t he notice that last night? It was a diagonal scar, above her hip. Looked like an incision.

“Just a boring old appendectomy,” she explained.

“When?”

“I was seventeen, I think. Twelve years ago.”

“You’re twenty-nine?”

“Mhm.”

“I wonder why I never asked.”

“Same reason I never said,” she shrugged. “It’s not important.”

All this time, he’d just assumed she was in her early to mid-twenties. He traced that little line and smiled when he drew out goosebumps on the surrounding skin. She was beautiful, and he could look at her until the universe imploded, but she was cold, so he drew the covers up over her again and fell back into the pillows.

“Did you think I was younger or older?”

“Just a bit younger, maybe.”

“Why?”

“Not sure.”

Belle narrowed her eyes and gave him a playful smile. “Is it because I’d be married with two kids and pregnant again at my age in the 1940s?”

“Perhaps,” he chuckled. “Or you just look younger than you are.”

“I get that a lot. It’s cause I’m so short, I know,” she mumbled, and he wasn’t sure whether her pout was for comedic effect or genuine. It hardly mattered, anyway. That lip jutting out and those downcast eyes had the same effect on him regardless of her intentions. Made him want to promise her everything in this world and worry about making it happen later.

“That’s not it,” he explained, shaking his head. “It’s everything about you, really. Your face. Your expressions, I suppose. Carefree. Like the world hasn’t gotten to you yet.”

But that wasn’t true, was it? She’d hardly been spared. She’d lost her mother at a very young age, and her father had uprooted and transplanted her halfway across the world while she was still in mourning. A sweet, motherless child in an unfamiliar land. Now, where had he heard that story before?

“Even though it has,” he added.

Belle shrugged and softly said, “It’s not like the world is trying to get to me. Good things and bad things are always going to happen. Can’t do anything about that. The trick is to do what you can with the little bit of power you do have, you know?”

“I suppose so.”

“If you take the good things and make them better, you’ll have more good than bad in the end. Does that make sense?”

What an adorable tentative little smile she gave him then, as if she didn’t know fully well that that made complete sense. He nodded, smirked and in a deeper voice clarified, “Provided you’re not exceptionally unlucky, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed, mimicking and exaggerating his nod, keeping up a poker face for all of three seconds before she burst out in a bright, playful grin, and he felt his own lips respond in kind.

She was wiser than him.

He leaned in to kiss her cheek, meaning for it to be a good night kiss so she would close her eyes and get some more rest, but she turned her head and made his lips catch the corner of her mouth instead. Her blue eyes caught his for a moment, as if she were making sure, and then she kissed his lips. Softly. Nothing like last night’s storm warning, the one he roundly ignored. Just a sweet kiss that seemed to have no purpose other than that brief touch. Contact.

“Why did you ask me to close my eyes when you took off your clothes?” she asked when she broke the kiss and settled back into her pillow. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

She could ask him anything she wanted, now, and he wouldn’t even think to deny her. She didn’t really look like she realized just how much power she had over him in this moment. That she had him in thrall.

“When I change something about myself, I don’t like seeing it change,” he explained.

“So you change it while you’re invisible.”

“Yes.”

“You thought I’d be weirded out by seeing you change?”

He shrugged and looked up at her ceiling, muttering, “I just didn’t want you to see me fade out.”

“Why?”

“Seemed wrong somehow. I wanted you to know there was nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“But I knew that, Rumple,” she cooed, two fingers turning his face towards her, “and I know you’re still there when you’re invisible.”

“It just seemed right in the moment.”

“Well, that’s sweet, but you don’t have to worry about that next time.”

Next time? He found himself grinning quite against his own will for all of two seconds before he could wrestle his face back into submission. He was one hundred and twenty five years old, for fuck’s sake, and she had him grinning like an excited teenager. He hoped she wouldn’t teach him how to blush again. That was the last thing he needed.

“So did you just think of yourself naked?”

“I suppose so. I just willed the clothes away.”

“I think that’s so neat. Kind of magical.”

“You’re the magician here, sweetheart, making things happen I would never in a hundred years - quite literally, mind - have believed could ever happen again.”

“Are you referring to your erection?” she offered, to her credit, at least _sounding_ as if she was trying not to giggle at his shyness. Very kind of her.

“Yes, that.”

And that was when she couldn’t hold back her laughter anymore.

“Sorry!” she cried, slapping her hand in front of her mouth and rolling over on her stomach so she could bury her face in her pillow and try to stifle her laughter that way. For some reason, the sound of her muffled giggles was infinitely more amusing, and it pushed him right over the edge and had him laughing, too.

“Sorry. You’re just so cute,” she sighed.

She was one to talk. He tore his eyes from the ceiling to find her smiling at him again, her eyes wet with tears of laughter.

“I just meant I didn’t have much to do with that,” he explained. “It was you.”

She deepened her voice, put on a serious face and muttered, “I should hope it was!”

“Shush,” he laughed, playfully putting a finger to her lips, which she promptly kissed. Of course she did. “I’m trying to make a simple, serious point, here, and you’re making it very hard.”

She snorted and burst out laughing, crying out, “Again?”

“Belle!” he growled, trying to sound as disapproving as he could before his mask cracked and revealed the fact that he was enjoying this giggly mood of her far more than he actually wanted to continue talking.

“I’m so sorry! I’m sorry! Go ahead, make your serious point.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“About your erection.”

And off she went again, laughing into her pillow. He wanted to trap her in his arms and tickle her until every ounce of laughter had left her system, but he suspected that would be a futile endeavor. That tiny body was probably an endless source of mirth. She could fuel rockets with her good moods. Outshine the sun with her smile.

“Bet you were a lot of fun at sleepovers,” he mock-grumbled.

“Sorry. Done now,” she said, wriggling back onto her side and wiping the tears from her eyes.

“Are you? Really?” he teased, raising a single, accusatory eyebrow.

“Really. Promise. What did you want to say?”

He’d almost forgotten. Something about how it was strangely similar to changing clothes, but completely different at the same time. How they seemed connected. How his mind had been soaked in her voice, and how her touches merely proved the point she was making with her words.

“I meant it was almost as if you did the thinking for me.”

“I don’t think so. I just gave you a push. Reminded you what it felt like.”

“Well,” he sighed, turning to lie on his side and face her again, “I still think that’s amazing.”

Belle’s little smile grew wider.

“I never said it wasn’t.”

He could kiss her. _That_ was amazing. He could just lean in and kiss her, whenever he wanted. This sweet, beautiful woman was his to kiss in this moment. What was he waiting for? His hand on her upper arm, bare above the covers, he leaned in and claimed her pretty lips. She slithered closer again, making a little sound into the kiss and let her fingers dance against his neck, curling his hair around them, brushing her thumb against his jaw. When he pulled back, she followed and kissed him again. It appeared she wasn’t quite through, which he would never in a million years even begin to mind. So he let her, and he lifted his head from the pillow a little bit to help her when she tried to slide her hand underneath to grab more of his hair.

His hair wasn’t exactly fashionable back when he was still alive. After his short stint as a soldier back home, he decided to let it grow, never to be mistaken for a soldier ever again. He trimmed it a little shorter and slicked it back when business required him to look less of a spaniel and more of a professional, but he’d always preferred it this way. It seemed Belle did, too, pulling gently and combing through, using it to angle his head so she could kiss him more thoroughly. He loved that. Made him grin into the kiss, though, because she was just ever so predictable when it came to that. Sooner or later, the hands would always end up buried in his hair. He wondered if she was aware of that.

Finally she came up for air and pulled away, smoothing down the mess she’d made of his hair to the best of her abilities. A little blush on her cheeks. Utterly charming. Belle sighed and looked very much as if she wanted to ask him a question she wasn’t quite sure she ought to ask. Luckily for her, he was in the mood to indulge her every whim.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, smiling faintly to assure her that he wouldn’t mind hearing at all. She nibbled on her bottom lip for a moment, distracting his feasting eyes.

“After Milah,” she began, eyes darting over his face to make sure she hadn’t just broached the wrong subject, “did you get close to anyone? I don’t necessarily mean physically. I’m just wondering. I really can’t imagine anyone as charming and handsome as you being on your own for very long.”

Oh.

He sighed and considered those few women who had gotten close, but not close enough for him to let them pull him over the line. One or two good women, who later found love elsewhere. Women he cared about, but couldn’t let in when it came down to it. Couldn’t risk getting anyone hurt. Least of all his boy.

“Some almosts,” he said, deciding that that was the best way to put it.

“Almosts?” she repeated, grinning. “I like that. I’m going to steal it.”

“You can have it.”

He could tell she wanted to ask him something else. Or for him to clarify, really. That was probably it. He could do that. He reached out, poked that curious nose of hers gently, and said, “Nothing like this.”

She smiled as if she’d just been promised a puppy for her birthday and chirped, “No?”

“You know my memory isn’t what it’s supposed to be, but I think I’d have remembered any Australian librarians dragging me into the religions section and kissing me until I, in your words, lit up like a Christmas tree.”

Her laughter turned into a yawn halfway through, and he smirked. She’d given sleep the slip, but it had caught up with her again, wrapping itself around her fuzzy mind and guiding her back where she belonged. He’d keep her warm body safe in his arms in the mean time.

“Shall I go and unplug your string lights?” he asked.

She shook her head. If she hadn’t been yawning at the time, he knew, she would have added a resounding ‘no’ to make it even more clear.

“You don’t want to sleep,” he sighed.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged and bit her lip again. He wanted to pull it free. It was entirely too distracting a nervous little habit.

“Don’t you feel it too?” she asked.

Oh, he felt it alright. If he let himself be perfectly selfish right now, he would pop down into the kitchen to fix her some coffee in the largest mug she owned - or perhaps a cereal bowl - and let her talk to him until the birds woke up and joined her choir. He nodded.

“I just want to hold on to this as long as we can, that’s all,” she explained, her sad, hopeful eyes cracking the heart he didn’t have as she aimed her devastating look at him. “No unpleasant thoughts. No worrying. Before we overbalance again. I know there are things we need to think about, but…”

In a way, it was a relief to hear that she knew they couldn’t keep this ball up in the air forever. In every other way, it was unbearably sad, and it made him want to press her head into his chest, hold her there and tell her that lie again. The one about them being alright.

“I’m happy right now, Rumple. I just want this feeling to last a little longer.”

Happy.

Why did that word hit him like a freight train?

Perhaps they could take what this night had given them and try to knit it a little longer - threads into blankets, this night into days. Another stay of execution. A truce between the dream they were dreaming together, and reality pounding on the door, clamoring to be let in. He sighed, let his tongue flit over his lips and held her gaze.

“When do you have to go back to work?” he asked. “Monday?”

“Yeah. I have a few articles I need to finish, but that never takes me too long. Why?”

Belle blinked at him, wrestling down a hopeful smile that told him she’d picked up on his meaning immediately, but didn’t quite dare allow herself to believe it.

“Perhaps we could think of it as one very long night. Draw this out.”

“Til Monday?” she asked, her careful little smile growing a bit wider. “No worrying? No bad thoughts?”

“I’ll do my very best.”

“So we can just,” she said, grinning excitedly and scooting closer to him, “be together?”

Her grin was about to tear her face in two.

“For now.”

That took away a bit of brightness from her face, but he had to say it. She had to remember. This was a temporary solution. A bandaid on a broken rib. But she nodded, swallowed and gave him a brave smile.

“And you’ll stay with me? All day and all night?”

“Unless you kick me out, of course.”

She grinned and launched herself at him, her arms around his neck and her breath warm against his ear, murmuring, “I’d love that more than anything in the world right now.”

He sighed and trailed his fingers through her beautiful, long dark hair, closing his eyes and swallowing the sadness down. No bad thoughts. No dark clouds. For her, but also for him. For the rest of the week, he would taste of this happiness that could never be his, drink it all up and commit every second of it to memory. The inner dialogue of imminent heartbreak and guilt ended now. Well. Until Monday.

“So now will you close your eyes, sleepy?”

“Yeah,” she yawned. “I think I will.”

And yet the promise of staying near her for every hour of every day for the next four days didn’t seem to make his proximity any less of an urgent necessity to her, because she just scooted as close as she was before and buried her pretty face in his shoulder again. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes.

It didn’t take very long for her breathing to fall into that telltale pattern of a calm, deep rest. He wouldn’t be getting any sleep. He knew that for sure.

He’d just have to wait.

…

The sun had been up for a little while, and he heard doors opening and closing all over the building. Belle hadn’t set her alarm again last night, which meant that she was still snoozing away in his embrace. He was getting impatient, now. Not because the pins and needles were back, because they weren’t.

It was because he missed her.

Lying there, feeling her, listening to her breathe, letting her squirm a bit in his arms whenever he imagined her dream took a turn; it was all very lovely, but it just made him want to have her completely his again. All of her. Her conversation, her bright blue eyes, her cheeky grin. Her company, really.

It was almost enough to make him consider waking her up. Almost. If he just feigned a coughing fit, or sighed a little too loudly, or shifted and let her fall out of his embrace, then he would have her back again. God, but no. He wouldn’t do that. He’d _wanted_ her to go back to sleep, after all. He could wait a while longer. She’d be up soon enough. People were heading to work and whistling in the hallways. A little girl ran down the stairs yelling for her father to hurry up or they’d be late. Seagulls screamed loudly in the distance, louder when they swooped past the window.

But she was so far away. What was she dreaming of, he wondered? Was she dreaming at all? There was some way of figuring that out, he knew, but he hadn’t actually read that article in that magazine someone had left out in the hallway all those months ago all that closely. Something about eye movements. He couldn’t check, even if he’d remembered what to look for; she had her face firmly pushed up against his chest. Sometimes she’d make a little sound. One time, it sounded like a ‘no,’ but not a panicked one. Just a ‘no’ out of nowhere. Maybe when she woke, he would ask.

To pass the time, he decided to rummage through his faulty old memory for the last dream he remembered having. When he was little, he often dreamed that his father came to pick him up from his great aunt’s little farmhouse and took him with him to the city, gave him the most delicious sweets to eat (he always dreamt up some strange, colorful thing) and carried him around the town faire on his shoulders. He often dreamed that dream because it had actually happened once, and then never again. It was a lovely memory, and his little brain just wanted more of it, he supposed. Years and years of that dream coming back to visit him every once in a while, like a loyal stray dog with a bit of well-timed comfort.

Now he wasn’t so sure which parts were dreamed up, and which were real. The memory had bled through. But he always pictured this beautiful blue and pink sunset sky and a lazy summer heat, which meant that he was up way past his bedtime. His aunt usually sent him to bed on time, but she would always pretend not to notice the light coming from under his bedroom door when he stayed up late reading. His father, however, let him stay up as long as he wanted that night, and carried him home in his arms when his wee body simply shut down after half past ten. When he woke up, he was gone. For months after that, he thought that day had been his birthday. It wasn’t. It was just a whim. It never happened again. After his aunt died and he had to make it on his own, he never dreamed that dream again. Instead there were stress dreams, nightmares, and those dreams where you trip and fall and wake up in a panic.

He hoped Belle was dreaming of sugary things and fairground music.

The sounds had died down. Everyone was off to work, or school, and the building was silent again. His fingers itched to poke her in the ribs and wake her up. Warm waking words fell from his whirring brain and into his mouth and fought to escape his lips, but he clamped his mouth firmly shut. And then, with no warning, she stretched in his embrace and broke away, yawned, rolled over on her stomach and blinked her sleepy blues at him. Oh, thank God. She was up. He smiled, hoping he didn’t look too relieved.

“Good morning.”

“Oh, is it?” she mumbled into her pillow. “I was hoping to make it past noon.”

“It’s probably about ten, is my guess.”

She looked at him a little while longer, her eyes slowly gliding over his face.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?”

It wasn’t really a question. He shook his head anyway.

“You didn’t have to stay in bed with me,” she said, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. “You could have read. You must have been so bored.”

“It was alright,” he said, shrugging. “There was some unexpected entertainment. Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

That seemed to wake her up; her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open until he couldn’t hold back his grin anymore and she realized he was just teasing her. She snorted, playfully pushed his shoulder and sidled up closer.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What for?”

“Staying close. Waiting.”

“I wanted to,” he replied, his voice that softer tone she always seemed to inspire simply by being a little nearer than usual. Her lips slowly curled into a smile and she just stared for a moment. He couldn’t read those eyes just then, but it didn’t matter, because the little kiss on his shoulder told him enough.

“I’ll be in the bathroom for a bit,” Belle said, rolling away from him and climbing out of bed. “You better be right here in this bed when I get back.”

“You’re making your own coffee, then?” he called out after her just as her head disappeared out of sight.

She stepped back up a few rungs so she could grin at him and reply, “I’m not having any yet.”

How the hell did she manage to make something as innocent as that sound so meaningful?

He heard Belle’s barefooted footsteps, the bathroom door opening and closing, water flowing, the cabinet door banging shut, the distinct sound of teeth being brushed, and she was climbing up the ladder again soon enough. Stark naked, still. It made him smile. He was beyond pleased that she didn’t think it necessary to cover up at all. She was without a care in that way, and it warmed his heart. Exactly as it should be.

“Now,” she sighed as she hopped back onto the bed, “I think,” she crawled over to him, “we should practice some more.”

Oh, good God. Belle was hovering over him now, sizing him up for breakfast, biting her lip and staring at his mouth, which he felt twisting into an excited grin.

“I thought we did rather well the first time,” he said, feigning innocence.

“Sure, we did great,” she murmured. “Perfect, in fact. But we can always do better.”

“Better than perfect?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Alright, okay, fair point. But we don’t want to get rusty, do we?”

“Yes, people notoriously forget how to do anything after - oh, how long has it been? Six hours?”

She laughed, touched her forehead to his and with her voice laced with something that poked at last night’s memories softly asked, “Are you seriously arguing _against_ this?”

“No, just riling you up. Is it working?”

She came crashing down on him, her lips parting his for her tongue to come through with very little ceremony, her hands - predictably - in his hair again, but gripping tighter this time. He groaned, grabbed her hips, pulled her down on top of him and arched up to meet her. She felt wonderful against him through that thin cotton sheet. Her breasts soft, nipples hard, the rest of her body warm and wriggling in his embrace. What had taken Belle so much patience and so many carefully chosen words and tactical touches last night was now just _happening_ , and he could barely believe it. It was making him a little light headed. The suddenness of it. Undeniable. Physical. The most physical he’d felt since he woke up to find himself a specter in a drafty attic.

When he rolled them over it felt as if his brain was loose in his skull, which was curious because he had neither. But her half-lidded eyes full of undeniable lust pulled him back together again, made the room stop spinning. She wanted him whole. He had to stay whole. She was _biting_ him now, her teeth scraping against his shoulder, and it didn’t hurt one bit, but the message got through loud and clear. So he lifted himself from her body just enough to slide an arm under her and flip her over. She squealed in surprise but giggled when he brushed away her hair and kissed her nape.

He traced her spine with kisses, down and back up again. He let his fingertips dance gently on her ribs and smirked when she squirmed and stifled some adorable high-pitched noises. He kissed every bit of her neck he could find, noting which spot made her mewl the cutest, then finally moved up to cover her body with his. He could just about kiss her this way, when she tilted her head and craned her neck. He slid his hand underneath her, found the heat and wetness between her legs, swallowed her gasping moan whole.

“Alright?”

She _wriggled_ against him, the minx.

“I take it that’s a yes.”

“Very cle- oh…”

They fit together as if they were made that way, were always meant to, which was absurd, completely absurd, because his body had failed before hers had even been conceived, but here they were, as close as could be. It was almost enough to make him think there had been a reason why his mind hadn’t died with the rest of him, and that was a dangerous, forbidden thought. He pushed it back down and focused on the feeling, her sounds, her heat and wetness, her little movements as she pushed up to meet him and her hand blindly reaching up but somehow finding his hair anyhow. His hair and her fingers, reunited yet again. The thought almost made him laugh, so he distracted his mouth by latching onto her neck. Kissing, licking, then biting her shoulder as she had his before. Gently.

She came faster this time, with all of her beautiful sounds and her blissful expressions, and it only made him want to give her more. She started talking again as soon as her body had stopped shaking underneath his, trying to pull him over the edge with her, but he silenced her with a kiss on the corner of her mouth and a softly whispered, “Not yet, sweetheart.”

He doubted he needed it, even, because he was feeling on his own, now. Not as intense as he had last night, but that was coming in handy with the way her body was just begging his to make her come again. If he tried, really tried, he could probably make her come several more times, because her body was so beautifully sensitive and responsive to his touch, but that would be excessive. Probably better not to mention that out loud, either, because he was sure Belle would want to give it a try and wear herself out in the process. Sleep all day and get nothing done.

Maybe some other time.

“Rumple…”

“Don’t you feel a bit silly, calling me that in this particular situation?”

“No,” she breathed. “You’re my Rumple.”

He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked that. Of course he was. That’s exactly who he was.

“Yes,” he whispered in her ear, letting his lips brush against the shell. “I am.”

She writhed, mewled, tried to find her words so she could wrap them around him like a shawl and pull him along, but all she could manage was _come_ and _please_ and that was more than enough, but he had to hold out for her. She was so warm - or was that him again? She was a star, a sun, a body of light and heat, and he couldn’t believe that he was holding on to her without burning his non-existent body to a pile of ashes. Only when she moaned low in her throat and he felt her shudder in his arms did he let himself go, pushing in as deep as he possible could, using the arm snaked underneath her body to pull her hips up, but then simply falling down and draping himself over her heaving body, still quivering with the occasional aftershock.

She sighed, or laughed, or both, but it was a _good_ sound, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t tell. He knew he should probably move off of her, but her fingers found some locks of his hair again and gave it a gentle tug to get his attention. He lifted his face from his shoulder and saw her look up at him from her pillow, in as much as she could from that angle.

She didn’t have to ask. He kissed the corner of her mouth, and her grip on his hair loosened to a gentle caress, then fell away completely. He moved up and threw himself on his back next to her with a contented sigh. She watched him and reached out to splay her hand on his belly.

“Do you know how good you are?” she asked, still out of breath. “Because seriously,” she continued, her voice deeper now, “you are _really_ good.”

Oh, yes. She was definitely trying to make him blush. But it was her blood that rushed to her cheeks, and she was the one with the flushed cheeks and the mischievous grin, and to say that he wasn’t just a little bit proud and pleased would be a lie.

“Beginning to think you’ve been practicing with other tenants,” she teased, poking him in the chest.

“Oh, did I not tell you about my thing with the woman in the flat next to yours?”

“Shut up!” she cried, giggling as she threw herself half over his body again, claiming him with a kiss that didn’t last very long because neither of them could really stop grinning. When she pulled away, she smiled and said, “I’m gonna take a shower.”

“Does that mean I can get dressed?”

“If you must,” she sighed dramatically, grinning as she rolled off of him and off the bed. “Try jeans.”

“Jeans?”

“Yeah! Just try! You can do it.”

He blinked and nodded. He supposed he could give it a try, despite his reluctance to stray from the familiar. It was difficult to say no to Belle when she wasn’t completely naked and sporting a devilish grin, so there was certainly no point in arguing, now.

But for a few moments, there, he couldn’t bring himself to move at all. He lay there and listened to the sound of her shower, which made a strange, creaking noise the landlord should probably have checked out. Was he in shock? Was it all hitting him just now? Or was he just a little bit dazed and unsure of what he could possibly say or do now that anything negative was out of the question? He’d promised her the rest of this week in their fragile little bubble for two, and for that he had to find his sharp edges and smooth them away.

He’d promised her. He had to. And he’d promised her, because he…

He’d promised her because she’d made him remember love long before she’d made him remember lust.

So he’d painted himself into a particularly soft, sweet and warm little corner, here. He was in for a world of pain, and he couldn’t bring himself to put himself out of his misery. He wanted her too much for that, and more importantly; he’d promised her he wouldn’t run.

He was an idiot.

Why did she joke about being ‘easy’ for wanting to sleep with someone after a week or three, when it was infinitely more preposterous to fall in love with someone you don’t deserve in an even shorter time span? But this wasn’t just someone. He had to remember that. It was Belle. Beautiful, intelligent, creative, playful, caring Belle, whose smile could make a wilted flower bloom again. And yes, he was aware that that was just about the sappiest, most ridiculously saccharine thing anyone could ever come up with, but she’d made a dead man love, for God’s sake. Cheering up a wilted flower would be child’s play for her.

He was doomed.

But there was no point in sulking. She’d be out of that shower, soon. Jeans, then. Alright. What color shirt would she prefer? Better go with white. If she didn’t like it, he could always change it later. He faded out, focused and imagined, and when he faded back in and looked down at his legs, he saw that it had worked. Of course it had. She was right. She was always right.

He sank down into the kitchen, not bothering to use the ladder now that she couldn’t see him. No bread on the counter. Bad start. He opened the refrigerator, and ah - eggs. Butter. _Something_. Scrambled? Sunny side up? Coffee, in any case.

“See! You look great in jeans,” she chirped, much nearer than he’d expected her to be. He hadn’t heard her come up over the sound of her coffee machine and damn near dropped all of her eggs on the floor. All snug in a red bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a towel, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

“You’re making me breakfast? Seriously?” she giggled.

“No, it’s for your neighbor,” he grumbled, biting down on his smirk.

“Well, I don’t know about her, but scrambled for me, thanks,” she said, giving his hair a playful reprimanding tug and bouncing off again. To get dressed, probably.

“What’s the difference between white and brown eggs?” she called out from the mezzanine. He smirked and melted the butter in a pan that she definitely hadn’t even used once in her life.

“I don’t know.”

“Does the color of the mommy chicken matter, d’you reckon?”

“ _Mommy_ chicken?” he laughed.

“Hen. Whatever.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you can predict the color of the chick that way.”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. Why don’t you - what was it? Google it?”

He could just about hear her laugh over the sound of the frying pan.

“Just thought you might know.”

“I know absolutely nothing,” he muttered under his breath.

That wasn’t entirely true. There were two things he knew for an absolute fact. Two mutually exclusive truths, but somehow there was no denying either. He was dead. That was the first one.

Belle climbed down the ladder in a pretty yellow dress, and his eyes were drawn away from her breakfast and to her smooth thighs instead. She hopped off the last rung and when she smiled at him, he almost forgot the first thing he knew for a fact. Because of the second truth.

He was hopelessly in love.


	15. Thursday, Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumple promised Belle four days of minimal doom and gloom. Thursday and Friday prove promising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another break from Rumple's bad thoughts. Plot and angst shake their heads disapprovingly and promise to catch up and kick ass later. The gods of indulgent sweetness win. _For now._
> 
> Thank you all for reading, commenting and leaving kudos, as always. And I do see you being nice about this fic in other places, you know. (I'm a weirdo hiding behind the bushes with binoculars. Don't call the cops, it's just me.) I appreciate it. Thank you.

**Thursday**

Sex with a ghost. Earth-shatteringly good sex with an actual ghost. _Twice._ It only hit her once she was up there on the mezzanine after her shower, trying to find something to wear. Belle had to sit down on her bed to have a quiet moment to try and come to terms with the fact that the best sex she’d ever had was with someone who could move through walls. To be fair, it took her all of seven seconds to get over the whole ghost aspect of it - that wasn’t the thing that had her paralyzed on the edge of her bed that late October morning. It was the fact that she’d thrown herself at him headfirst and didn’t even stop to think that it might not have worked.

It was like absent-mindedly crossing a busy street in a hurry and realizing just how stupid a move it was once you’ve made it over safe, missing a bus by the breadth of a hair. A delayed shot of fear, a shock straight to the heart. What if it hadn’t worked? What if she’d just kept on talking and touching and nothing had happened? He would have been mortified, and he would have added the whole thing to that pile of reasons they couldn’t be together he was guarding like a dragon its sad treasure, as if it wasn’t a heaving, towering mess of negativity already. But it wouldn’t have been a deal breaker for Belle. Not at all. The fact that he could fuck her to within an inch of consciousness was just a really, really, _really_ nice bonus.

When she’d hopped off the ladder, Rumple was staring fixedly at her face, which clued Belle in on the fact that he’d really been looking elsewhere. She smiled at him and enjoyed his shy, faltering grin as he looked away in a hurry. It was cute that he thought she’d mind. Or was he trying to play it cool? Either way, it was endearing, and she couldn’t keep her eyes off him as she ate her scrambled eggs and he washed the pan he’d used to cook them. There was something about the way he looked at her that made her melt, so she made a point of it to return the favor as often as she could and stare right back, hoping the warmth of her feelings shone through.

Even if she was mostly staring at his bum. He really did look good in jeans.

“Untuck the shirt, maybe,” she tried, her half smirk letting him know that she wasn’t serious, exactly. But he snorted, grinned, shook his head and faded out (floating frying pan!) and back in with his shirt untucked, muttering something about ‘fashion nowadays.’

Rumple was doing rather well so far, on the negativity front. He hadn’t grumbled about anything at all (the shirt thing didn’t count) but then again, it was still early, and she didn’t want to underestimate his penchant for self-loathing and grey-sky thinking. He’d been all smiles and shy glances so far, and that was absolutely perfect, but he looked a little more faint than usual, Belle had noticed. A little more see-through, like back when they’d first met and he was still getting used to being visible again.

“So,” he sighed, sticking the dried off pan back where he’d found it (a cupboard Belle hadn’t opened in months), “what are your plans for the day?”

He had his arms folded on the island counter and smiled at her just in time to see her make the last of her delicious breakfast disappear into her mouth. Excellent question, but Belle couldn’t really answer it, so she shrugged and raised her eyebrows instead. He gave her a curious look, his smile stalling.

“ _Our_ plans, you mean. What would you like to do?” she fired back.

“Me?” he huffed, dramatically slapping his hand to his chest. Belle rolled her eyes and nodded, gathered her plate, fork and empty mug and walked over to the kitchen sink to unceremoniously dump them in there.

“Yes, you,” she sang. She brushed her fingers through his hair as she walked past him on the way to the sofa. “Is there anything you’d like to do?”

“Not really.”

Belle had expected him to come join her, but instead she heard the sound of running water, and she snapped around to see him at the sink, quite ready to start attacking her dirty plate with a sponge. Her mind drifted back to the night she asked him whether they could touch. He’d looked fainter after touching her then, too, and that had just been a soft, feather light touch of his finger. What they did last night and this morning was… well. It was way more intense than that. She’d been wearing the poor man out, hadn’t she?

“Come sit! I’ll take care of that later,” she called out. Belle could have sworn he’d mumbled something suspiciously similar to “Sure you will,” but she decided to let it slip. There he came, anyway, surprising her by sitting not at the other end of the couch but right next to her, and pulling her sideways onto his lap with an exaggerated groan that made her roll her eyes yet again. But still she draped her arms around him and her lips twisted themselves into a smile. If he kept up this cute, playful attitude of his, Belle’s eyes would simply roll out of their sockets and he could go looking for them under the sofa.

But Belle certainly wasn’t complaining; this was the most forward he’d been with her so far. Well, disregarding the biting and the gripping and the two consecutive orgasms before breakfast, of course, but that was different. This was effortless and careless. Domestic. Instinctive. This was what she pictured it to be like when she closed her eyes at night and thought about the future. She would come home from work and the lights would be on, the oven preheating maybe. She’d find him reading or drawing, and he’d pull her down onto his lap and half-heartedly complain about the clothes she left lying around that morning and the coat she just threw over a dining chair in her hurry to kiss him hello.

It would be perfect. Just like now.

She’d wanted to tell him he could stop putting so much energy into being touchable for her sake, but now that he’d gathered her in his arms as if she was always supposed to be there and he was giving her that fond, meaningful look again, the words scattered and hid behind her army of excuses, and she melted into him; her head on his shoulder, his lips delivering a sweet little kiss to her forehead.

“Maybe we should just take it easy today,” she just about managed.

He hummed absently and drummed a slow rhythm on her thigh with his fingers. His deep voice sent a shiver down her spine.

“Was that agreement or disapproval?”

“Indifference,” he sighed. “Anything you like’s fine.”

This was too tempting. _He_ was too tempting. She was trying to spare him, but when she looked up to finally tell him that he was looking fainter than usual and she was getting a little bit worried, his impossibly dark eyes stole the words right out of her mouth yet again. There was a magnetic pull from his lips to hers Belle wasn’t even aware of until she’d leaned in so close his eyes had fluttered shut in anticipation.

No. She had to give him a break.

“Well, then. A quiet day in it is,” she chirped, kissing his cheek instead and hopping off his lap.

“Where are you off to, then?”

“Blankets and the remote control.”

She gathered her softest, warmest fleece blankets in her arms, dumped them in Rumple’s lap to his utter confusion, and as she scoured the room for the remote, said, “You’re a little more see-through than usual.” She hoped it sounded casual enough. She didn’t want him to worry at all, she just wanted him to relax and recharge somehow, not that she had any clue as to how he usually went about that.

“Oh?”

With the remote finally found, Belle sat herself down next to him and relieved him of the pile of blankets, curling her legs up under her and draping the blankets over their laps. Rumple, meanwhile, held his hand up in front of his face, turning it, peering at it.

“So I am,” he said softly. His tongue flicked against his lips and his brow furrowed. “Nothing to worry about.”

“No?”

She hadn’t meant for her voice to sound so uncertain and small.

“Course not. I feel fine, sweetheart. It’s just temporary. I might have…” He paused to reach over and tuck some disobedient locks of hair behind her ear and continued, “… overexerted myself the past few days.”

“But you didn’t know you were fainter,” Belle insisted, despite his charmingly suggestive little smirk threatening to weaken her resolve. He shrugged and muttered,

“Think of it as autopilot. It’ll sort itself out.”

“Maybe you should disappear and go untouchable for the rest of the day. Conserve energy.”

Rumple laughed, albeit silently, but when he caught her serious look, he quickly wiped the smirk from his face and explained, “An invisible, incorporeal man doesn’t make for good company.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll still know you’re here.”

“Belle,” he sighed, “I just won’t lift anything heavy today, and you’ll have to resist turning me into your personal night light for a few hours. If you can manage that.”

Oh, he was good. That mischievous little grin. The teasing tone of his voice. That night light joke. Trying to distract her, was he?

“But if you do what I suggested, you’ll recover faster, and we can see about busting all of the other lights later,” offered Belle, not quite able to stop her eyebrow from twitching up a little suggestively, even though she really ought to take her foot from the accelerator.

“Excellent argument well presented, but I refuse to be the equivalent of a voice inside your head. If you insist, I’ll turn invisible or stop being solid. Either. Not both.”

“Deal!” she cried, grinning victoriously.

“Alright, then. Which will it be?”

“Oh, I can pick?”

“Mhm.”

She grinned and leaned into his shoulder, let him pull her even closer and decided, “Handsome though you are, you’ve still got a lot of making up to do for treating me like a leper for so long. Touch, please.”

“I agree, actually. Touch it is.”

And that was how Belle French spent the rest of her morning and some part of the afternoon on her sofa being spooned by an invisible ghost underneath a bunch of soft blankets, watching The Fellowship of The Ring. Her life certainly had taken an interesting turn, hadn’t it? She’d made the right choice, asking him to turn invisible. It was a little strange to have his arms around her and yet see absolutely nothing when she glanced down to where she felt him around her waist, but she got used to it pretty quickly. Even if he had turned himself untouchable, too, Belle would still have felt him in the room. It was difficult to explain. The lack of a chill was the best way to put it. A gap filled, a pilot light burning.

Belle murmured, “I could be the big spoon and still be able to watch the screen through your head,” when there was a lull in the plot and she could practically feel Rumple’s attention waning. She delighted in the sound of his deep, soft laughter so close to her ear.

“You’ll never be the big spoon,” he growled.

“You’re only a _relatively_ big spoon,” she teased, squealing as he dug his fingers into her ribs in a retaliatory attack. She turned around in his embrace so she could find that spot just underneath his ear that made him squirm and was a little startled to find nothing there. Like expecting there to be another step on a staircase and tripping up. She’d sort of forgotten. Belle felt his chest against hers, found his waist and snaked an arm between him and the back rest, but all she saw was the sofa, and her blankets draped over what looked like nothing. It wasn’t nothing, of course. It was the man who made her heart beat faster, and he was just as much _there_ as she was.

“Do you need me to come out?” he asked, sensing her little staircase stumble. Well? Did she? She closed her eyes and carefully inched her face closer to where she thought his would be. Her nose bumped into his chin, and she felt him laugh without sound.

“No,” she said. She really didn’t. This was strange, but no stranger than anything else they’d gone through together so far. This was still him. Her Rumple, kissing the top of her head once she’d wriggled back to face the TV. Her Rumple pulling her back into his chest a bit more because he was worried she’d slip off the sofa. Her Rumple pretending to be interested in the movie but obviously falling asleep with his arms around her. She could just see right through him, that’s all. Didn’t mean he was any less there.

Could she join in for a nap? She did feel a little sleepy. She reached over for the remote, slowly and carefully so as not to dislodge his arms, and clicked off the television. Rumple didn’t stir, so she lay back in his embrace and closed her eyes. Oh, yes, she could definitely drift off like this. Under these blankets, it was difficult to say whose warmth it was, but it was one of those things that didn’t matter. Belle hoped he felt just as warm and safe as she did. Sleep came for her quickly and made her dream of mountainous landscapes and ancient forests until she woke up to a darker room and his thumb drawing circles on her belly. No mountains, no forests. Still warm.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

“Mm.”

She was glad he was up. Belle never did much like this faint evening light, the setting sun filtered by a uniform mass of grey clouds. She couldn’t stand being alone in it. Either the lights went on, or she went out when this unpleasantly sterile light took over the room. But now that she had Rumple here, she didn’t mind so much. It was just a certain kind of light, now, with him here. No strange melancholy loneliness.

“Me too.”

She felt his lips right between her shoulder blades. She knew she’d put on that summer dress on a dreary October day for a reason.

“Heard your stomach making a fuss while you were still asleep. Think you might be hungry.”

“I don’t wanna move, though,” she whined, squirming in his arms like a petulant child just to make him chuckle.

“Well I can’t sit idly by while you starve, sweetheart.”

Belle sighed heavily and slowly disentangled from Rumple’s warm embrace to sit up straight. She _was_ hungry, actually. Pizza, maybe? Her blankets flew up and onto her lap, which meant that Rumple had gotten up, a suspicion confirmed when the lights switched on and chased away that grayness completely. She shuffled over to the fridge for some orange juice, hoping to chase the remnants of sleep out of her head that way. It had been ages since Belle had taken a proper nap like that. She’d forgotten how difficult it was to crawl back up and get going again, after.

“Orange juice is not a meal,” came his voice from right behind her as she let the fridge door fall shut. Belle smirked.

“Relax, Rumple,” she half sighed, half sang. “I’m not the type to skip dinner. I thought you’d have figured that one out by now.”

“Sorry.”

Orange juice in hand, trying to suppress a yawn, Belle opened the freezer door and saw exactly zero options she was in the mood for. Chinese food it was, then. A walk’d be just the thing to wake her up. Belle downed the rest of her juice, put the glass in with the rest of the washing up she’d get to at some point, probably, and said, “Come with me. We’ll go pick up some Chinese food together.”

“You want me to come?” he asked, his voice skeptical but not disapproving exactly.

“Of course I do!” she chirped, quickly slipping into a pair of flats and looking around for her coat, which she suddenly found floating towards her and draped over her shoulders. Belle giggled. He sure did love to make her laugh with his little ghost tricks for a man who swore up and down that he was an abomination.

“We were going to spend this time together, remember?”

“I remember,” he assured her.

“Good, cause it was your idea!”

Which meant that he wanted to be with her. Didn’t it? It could only really mean that, right? Because Belle had half expected him to drag his feet and point out each and every little hiccup they encountered in this little trial period - like her obvious moment of mild shock when she’d forgotten that he was invisible earlier on the sofa - but there’d been none of that so far. He had been there with her every second of the day, playing the part as if he wasn’t really playing at all, and just being.

Which part was that, though? Belle felt his invisible arm around her waist as they made their way down the stairs and out into the cold evening and the word ‘boyfriend’ imposed itself in her consciousness, emblazoned on a golden banner, accompanied by loud trumpets and a flock of white doves fluttering away to the four winds.

Oh dear. She was in one of those moods, now. Her mental imagery was spinning out of control, fueling and fueled by this pleasantly dizzying feeling in the pit of her stomach to trap her in some sort of feedback loop of adolescent giddiness and anticipation. That’s why she didn’t mind the cold wind wrapping around her legs, and that’s why she was practically bouncing on the pavement, grinning like a fool. Just walking down the street with her almost-boyfriend, no big deal. Her sexy, handsome almost-boyfriend, who was handsome just for her. Just getting some fried noodles, taking her almost-boyfriend back home, having dinner while he talked and made her laugh, jumping him and kissing him ’til her lips got sore. You know. A regular Thursday night.

…

But sitting around at a rickety table in an empty restaurant with nothing but the sound of noodles frying, some tinny music from an old speaker on the fritz, and the cook singing in the kitchen was getting just a little bit too dull for Belle to bear.

So she reached into her bag and took out a pen and her notebook, opened it to an empty page and drew a love heart in two slow, deliberate lines. She smirked to herself when she heard a soft burst of breath; Rumple was obviously watching, and clearly amused. She was adding two little stick arms with little stick fingers (she couldn’t draw to save her life, but she wasn’t letting that stop her) to her doodle when all of the sudden she felt a familiar pressure surrounding her hand, enveloping it, guiding it to an empty spot on the paper. His hand, leading hers.

She watched with bated breath as her hand moved and drew lines that weren’t hers. Movements completely foreign to her muscle memory. It felt odd, but thrilling somehow. No-one knew. No-one could see. Their movements were a little bit stiff and shaky, and sometimes the ink didn’t quite make it onto the paper because Belle suspected he didn’t want to push down her hand too hard, but slowly the lines turned into a picture, and the picture started to make sense.

He’d drawn a heart. A simple but anatomically correct one; veins, arteries and all. Belle grinned and then bit her lip to stifle her giggle. Show-off. She let him finish, but when his hand left hers, she quickly added the little stick figure arms and legs she’d added to her love heart and heard another strange, strangled noise that told her he was trying not to laugh again. She coughed to cover it up, but that cough turned into a giggle halfway through.

Then came the unexpected but sweetly familiar feeling of his lips against her cheek, and Belle’s breath caught in her throat. Really, now? Really? Why so sweet when she couldn’t reward him for it? That little affectionate reminder pulled at something just behind her ribs and she felt her cheeks heat up. God, and now she was blushing her bum off. The woman behind the counter was busy fiddling with the register, but what would she think if she looked over and saw her staring down at her notebook, looking as if she’d just drawn something so scandalous she’d managed to offend herself?

Her fingers moved before her brain had fully approved the action, a little bit as if it was Rumple guiding her hand again, but it wasn’t. Not directly, anyway. It was all her, writing _FOLLOW ME_ on the bottom of the page in thick, confident letters as if she actually had a plan of some sort. Belle underlined it three times and hoped he’d been looking. Her feet brought her to the bathroom faster than she’d thought, her mouth couldn’t quite stop grinning. She closed the door behind her and locked it, of course. It was a clean room with black tiles lining the wall, one sparkling clean toilet bowl and a sink with lots of pretty little soaps shaped like animals, lined on the edge to make a little soap bar zoo.

“Rumple?”

“What’s this about?” he whispered. There he was, fading in but not completely, probably worried that someone would walk in, see him, and make a scene. Good enough, though - she could see his handsome if slightly mistrustful smile. Belle took his hands and pulled him close with just a single tug.

“I was getting bored, and you were being cute.”

“ _I_ was being cute? That’s rich, that,” he growled.

His hands found her hips and fit just right, and his smirk was an invitation steadily getting too tempting to resist. Building up inside of her was something loud and powerful. The hair on her arms stood on end when he pulled her hips just a little bit closer, subtle enough that it could have been subconscious. Maybe it was that magnetism she liked to imagine made them come crashing into one another every once in a while. Her fingers itched to touch him, but that strong feeling inside of her was getting even stronger, and she wanted to see how strong it would get. Like a charge building up. It felt electric in her veins - like a buzzing in her limbs, almost. The tension made her want to bounce on her heels, or worry the hem of her dress, or rub her fingers together, but she was ever so curious as to what would happen if she just… waited.

“Whatever did you drag me in here for, hm?” he whispered, his face closer now. She didn’t answer. Just stared. Smiled. Waited to see if he had that very same spring coiled tight inside of his chest, like hers. There was a glimmer of a grin, but then his eyes just darkened and slowly roved over her face, her neck, the slopes of her breasts, never settling in any one place for too long until they found her lips and in a deep murmur he told her, “Never thought you’d run out of words.”

Sometimes Belle felt as if Rumple was just letting her have her fun, as if he were a friendly old golden retriever tolerating a playful kitten, reciprocating the occasional bat of a paw or _boop_ of the nose, but never really getting the ball rolling himself. She knew he wanted to kiss her. She knew that for a fact. What she really wanted was for him to realize that they were playing this game together, and that it was time for him to take his turn. So Belle waited and offered nothing but a quirked eyebrow and a hint of a smirk, hoping he would cave before the time bomb in her belly went off and sent her flying into his arms first.

Rumple narrowed his eyes, inclined his head a little bit and mouthed a silent ‘oh,’ that only made her stomach clench tighter. Belle was steadily getting drunk on the air between them, thick with anticipation and the promise of affection. Whispering in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant, flirting so outrageously her reflection in the mirror was rolling her eyes, her grin now so wide it was getting a little painful, Belle knew perfectly well that she was in too deep. But it was just a fleeting realization; a split second _oh_ before the corner of his mouth twitched up a little in his glorious smirk, and everything else in the world was gone, blown away, evaporated to nothingness in the blink of an eye. There was just him, smoothly inching closer, and her, standing perfectly still and wishing. Absolutely nothing and no-one else mattered in this moment, and it was perfect. Just this look. The surface tension waiting patiently for someone to break it.

It was him. With his hands still on her hips he leaned in with slightly parted lips and caught her. She felt that charge prickle between their lips, or imagined it. It hardly mattered either way, because the effect was the same. When he broke the kiss, Belle tilted her head up for more, but he guided her back against the wall instead, his hands either side of her head. Trapped her gently like a rare butterfly for his collection. And wasn’t it strange that the reason she had her arms straight down at her sides, hands splayed against the flat surface, was because she wanted desperately to wrap herself around him instead? Something about that layer of static between them. Something about that brief, light brush of the lips that was somehow much more intense than anything she could imagine short of pulling up her dress and getting him in between her thighs right then and there. It was more intense the less they touched.

Again, he kissed her; and again, it was gentle and dreamlike. It prickled and sparked, gave her goosebumps, made her breathe more shallow when he finally broke his second soft kiss to stare her down. Having his hands either side of her head against the wall felt so right. Like she was caged in safe. If it had been anyone else, Belle would have felt unpleasantly cornered, but this was different. Everything was different with Rumple. She hadn’t minded being the one to take the lead so far, and she certainly didn’t mind making a bit of a fool of herself to make sure he knew just how much she wanted him - all of him, in every way - but this was what she really needed in that moment. To know he wanted her close.

Another kiss. A daring nibble at her bottom lip that sparked something a little hotter, drew out a little sound she hadn’t ever heard herself make before. She couldn’t help her hands from flying up into his hair now. Why did that make him laugh? Oh, well, it didn’t matter, because he was kissing her properly now, and his hands had fallen from the wall onto her shoulders, down to her hips and sliding back up again, his thumbs just brushing past her breasts - subtle enough so that it might have been an accident, but then she felt the lips she was currently practically sucking on like a desperate fumbling teenager curl into a smile, and there went that theory.

Too much. He had no idea what he did to her. He only thought he did, but he didn’t even know the half of it.

Belle forced herself to break the kiss and when she opened her eyes and saw him staring at her with open adoration, the heat settled to a pleasant, manageable warm glow. His smile was entirely in his gorgeous eyes. In them, she read the words she felt. She heard them in her mind’s voice, felt them rumble through her entire body, making her fingers twitch again. Uselessly. Desperately. She wouldn’t say the words. She didn’t think she even needed to. Why would she? Wasn’t it obvious what was happening between them?

Because there they were, weaving their stories together into one that spanned over time’s chasm and death itself. Two ends of the same string, the two of them. They had found other in this great big tangled mess of billions of human lives and tied themselves together to make a perfect circle. And their thread might have been as thin as single strand of hair, and sometimes it was pulled so taut it looked like it might snap and whip back to strike them a heavy blow each, but it was theirs and it was precious and golden, and Belle knew that it was stronger than it looked. It had to be.

Oh, yes, there they were. Kissing in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant and staring at each other with the goofiest smiles because that was a perfectly reasonable way to spend your time when you were in love. In love and lost in a personal universe contained within the four walls of a tiled room that smelled of lavender soap while a dated dance playlist sounded muffled in the other room. It was perfectly absurd and absurdly perfect. Belle’s laughter surged up from deep inside her belly with very little warning, and she buried her face in his chest, hoping that whatever it was that he was made of would muffle the sound. God, she loved him. She loved him so incredibly much.

A knock on the door. A tear in the fabric of their little universe.

“Miss? Are you alright in there? Your order’s ready!”

“Oh, yes! Sorry! I’ll be right out!”

Rumple faded out with a deep, stifled chuckle, and Belle tried very hard to wipe the grin from her face, but it was useless. Especially with his lips pressing another sweet kiss on her cheek right before she opened the door and left their little personal universe to implode on itself. Without them there, it had no reason to exist. They could make a new one anywhere they wanted, anyway.

His hand was in the small of her back as they made their way home under flickering streetlights. There was no-one around, but they didn’t say a word. They didn’t need to.

Back home, Rumple refused to stay invisible any longer, so he faded back in just enough for Belle to see him. She ate her dinner on the sofa with his arm around her shoulder and they picked up their movie where they’d left off. He only left her side for a minute or two to turn off the main lights and plug in all of her fairy lights instead - a little act that made Belle’s heart glow fondly, because she hadn’t asked him to. He’d just decided.

And it was only natural that she ended up in his lap again, nuzzling, kissing, playing with each other’s hair as if they hadn’t done enough of that already. Well, they hadn’t, really. Not if you asked Belle. And with the way Rumple was threading his fingers through her hair, she suspected that he wouldn’t quite agree, either. She fell asleep on top of him that night, warm and soft in her bed, safe in the knowledge that tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, he would still be hers.

 

**Friday**

A bag of lollipops slid from the shelf and fell into her basket and Belle nearly jumped up in fright. Once her heart had stopped trying to beat its way out of her ribcage and she was sure no-one was around to hear, Belle teased, “You’d like to watch me eat those, hm?” in a low murmur. His response to that was a featherlight tickle just underneath her ear that made her giggle and squirm away.

Grocery shopping with Rumple was exactly the interesting experience she suspected it would be.

Honestly, she’d just wanted him to go shopping for halloween candy with her. How could she possibly pass up the chance to pick out halloween treats with a ghost by her side? So Belle had just gone straight for the candy section and slowly, deliberately picked out a great big bag of ghost-shaped gummy candies, which earned her a gentle but strategically aimed poke in the ribs that had her coughing in an attempt to cover up her high-pitched squeal.

She’d managed to convince him to come with by warning him that if he merely gave her a list of ingredients to bring back, she would surely bring back the wrong things. The wrong cut of beef, for instance. And did he know just how many kinds of potatoes there were? Really and truly, Belle held within her impulsive little head the potential for an infinite amount of minor mess-ups, she assured him, and with a dramatic sigh and an exaggerated roll of his beautiful eyes, Rumple had agreed.

So that’s how they ended up walking under buzzing fluorescent lights, in between shelves stacked with colorful things that Belle imagined must have looked pretty foreign in Rumple’s eyes. More sugar than cereal in the cereal, preposterous health claims on the Pop Tarts (didn’t stop her from putting a box of blueberry ones in her basket, though), huge value packs of things of very little value, and well, gosh, would you just look at all of those different kinds of condoms! Belle deliberately and demonstratively stood still right in front of them, smirking when she heard a little burst of breath that meant he was either trying not to laugh, or biting back some sort of half-indignant remark.

“Been saving some money there, lately,” she murmured under her breath with a lopsided smirk that only grew wider when she felt his hand at her hip, pushing her on - but not without a little squeeze, first.

In front of the meat section, his hand guided hers to the right steak, which to Belle didn’t look any different from the others. Good thing she’d brought him, then. With his fingers daintily holding on to hers so as not to make it look too strange, he guided her along to the produce section for mushrooms, salad and a lemon. Then to the dairy section for cream, milk and eggs, then finally, after walking her past the right aisle no less than three times, he brought her hand up to a bag of flour.

“Pancakes?” she whispered. A little old lady shuffling past her with a handy looking shopping bag on wheels gave her some expert side-eye. Belle grinned quick and broad, then shoved the bag into her basket and scurried away with her belly full of giggles and her basket full of candy, dinner and breakfast.

With his hand squarely on her ass at the checkout line, Rumple had pushed one too many of her buttons. He’d better cook that steak fast.

…

After scarfing down her delicious steak dinner, Belle felt that Rumple was getting just a little bit too close to a Scrabble victory for her comfort. Her official excuse, however, was that he looked incredibly sexy while he was doing it; his tongue peeking out from between his lips and with that stern almost-librarian look on his face. So if he thought to ask just why exactly she’d pounced on him in the middle of his turn, which Belle very much doubted he would, that was the explanation he’d get.

But he _was_ , though. Incredibly sexy, that is. So it wasn’t _really_ an excuse. And Belle had gotten tremendously impatient and hungry for his touch the past few days. It wasn’t some sort of fleeting craving to satisfy, or an itch to scratch. It was a constant humming desire that sometimes went very quiet and still, but never really went away anymore.

So that’s why she’d crawled into his lap, kissed him, writhed shamelessly in his embrace until he got the blatant hint and slid his hand up her skirt and between her thighs. She bucked on his fingers and against his palm until she came, murmuring unintelligible praise in his ear. She came again minutes later when he had her spread out on the floor, his one hand kindly cupping the back of her head so she wouldn’t stupidly knock herself out while the other was still down the front of her panties doing something decidedly less gentlemanly.

Rumple wanted to move it to the bed. Belle didn’t have the patience. (“Boys who tease girls when they can’t tease back don’t get to choose.”) It was the first time her sofa saw any real action. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, but it suited her purpose. Skirt hiked up, blouse unbuttoned, his hands all over the place and the muscles in her legs getting sore from the work-out, Belle drank in his expressions and knew she’d never forget the way he looked at her then. Reverent, almost. Hypnotized, maybe.

With anyone else, Belle would have insisted on this position from the start, not expecting them to know her body as well as she did. But with Rumple, her desire to have him cover ever inch of her body with his had been (and still was) infinitely more compelling than that urge to make sure she got what she needed that very first night they spent together, and what a head rush it had been to find out that she could have _both_ with this man.

She still preferred to feel him all over, to have him on top of her and give him control, but this was beautiful. Watching him like this. Being the one to lean down and kiss or bite or whisper, to set the pace and read the signs of his body like a favorite book. When she talked him through it this time, Belle knew she didn’t really have to, but she was starting to enjoy this verbal aspect of their intimacy, glad though she was that his pleasure wasn’t dependent on it anymore. Words fueled her, kept her awake, calmed her, made her smile, made her cry, made her _come_ nowadays, because Rumple was getting rather chatty himself; asking her if she was close, if it felt good, what she needed him to do. And frankly, it didn’t even matter what he said. His voice was enough to push her over the edge.

So with his throatily murmured, “Go on, love,” Belle came first; shuddering, grinding down, clutching at his hair, trying to keep her eyes open so she could watch him watch her, but it was impossible - the waves overpowered her and she pushed her face into his shoulder to ride them out, mouth open against his skin in a silent shout. When she got herself together again and felt his hands sliding further up her thighs to grab her hips, Belle straightened herself so she could smile down at him as he reached that very same point. Glowing faintly, looking just a little bit magical, losing himself to the feeling, bucking up as she pushed down. If she’d looked half as beautiful in the throes of her orgasm as Rumple did just then, the man had some amazing self-control, because this was almost unbearably erotic.

Slumped, sated, sticky with sweat, breathing fast, Belle didn’t want to move an inch. His hands were on her back, just underneath her unbuttoned blouse. She felt his lips move against her ear but heard no words. She felt them, though, and that was enough. Belle kissed his jaw, carefully disentangled and stood up. God, he was gorgeous - naked and disheveled, looking up at her as if at a marble masterpiece on a pedestal as she let her top fall from her shoulders and unhooked her bra.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting undressed.”

“I can see that,” he lilted deep, shooting her a tiny little grin.

“I’m taking a shower. Why don’t you come with me?”

One of those ideas she hadn’t fully vetted in her own mind before her vocal tract rushed to voice it. She could always tell from Rumple’s reaction whenever she’d been hasty, and now was no different. The lazy, blissful expression on his face made way for a slightly worried one, and he sat up straight and asked, “Actually _in_ the shower?”

Well, she had to sell it now, didn’t she? She hadn’t given it that much thought, but really, what could possibly be the harm in getting him wet? In fact, she suspected he must have been fairly water repellent in the first place, because it’s not as if there wasn’t any fluid involved in what they’d just gotten up to (not his, but still) and it never seemed to stick to him. Which was kind of a weird thing to be thinking about, but it was one of those practical, unromantic things that only came to mind _after_ she’d impulsively thrown herself into the situation.

“Yes! Actually in the shower!” she chirped, shimmying out of her skirt. Where had her panties gone? Oh, under the coffee table. Eh, she’d pick those up later.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said, shaking his head a little nervously. But still he took her proffered hand and let her pull him up from her sofa. Belle smiled.

“Aren’t you curious?”

Rumple sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, staring at her feet in that way of his that told Belle he was making an effort not to be shy, but not quite succeeding. Belle could see he wanted to cover up again. She could also see he wasn’t actually really opposed to this shower idea of hers.

“I wasn’t before you mentioned it,” he muttered. Good enough.

“Come along, then,” she sang, gently pulling him along by the hand until they were both stood in her small bathroom.

“Always takes a while to warm up,” Belle explained as she reached into the stall to check the temperature of the water. “It’s always worse in the morning, though. Shouldn’t take too long now.”

It wasn’t as if Belle thought she was making particularly interesting conversation, but Rumple wasn’t even responding with a hum or an _ah_ , so she looked over her shoulder to find him blinking at her nervously, chewing his lip. Oh dear. That’s twice now she’d made him nervous in her bathroom. Belle reached for his hand. He let her take it. She tried to smile as reassuringly as possible, then turned back to face the shower so he wouldn’t feel obliged to smile back. It was okay for him to be a little hesitant, and Belle wanted him to know that. She just wouldn’t let it stop him from doing something as simple as enjoying a shower. Showers were good. One of life’s simplest, most magical tricks to feel better. Surely he remembered that?

She went in first. The water was perfect, and she let it soak her hair and beat down on her face for a moment, her eyes clenched shut. “You coming?” she asked, grinning through the rain.

But his hand was on her shoulder before she could finish her sentence. Just a brief touch that fell away. He’d just followed her right in. Belle turned around to face him and saw him looking the most tranquil she’d ever seen him. His eyes were shut, his arms limp at his sides, his head drooping just a little bit. Not… exactly the reaction she’d expected. There wasn’t much room to move around in, so Belle reached over his shoulder to pull the shower curtain closed. Most of the water wasn’t even hitting him, so Belle gently took him by the wrists and pulled him a little closer to stand more directly under the shower head.

“Rumple?”

No response. He just tilted his head up and let the water hit his face. This must have been more intense for him than Belle had thought. Was he alright? She wasn’t losing him, was she? Because he didn’t seem like he was noticing her at all, and didn’t he tell her she was his anchor? That she kept him grounded whenever sensations overwhelmed him?

Belle stood on her tiptoes and softly kissed his bottom lip, hoping that that would keep him with her. When she pulled back, he was slowly tilting his head down and towards her, his eyes cracking open for just a small sliver of deep brown to appear. He looked hypnotized. She wanted to ask him what it felt like, if he was alright, but she didn’t want to break the spell. The water ran down him smoothly, didn’t even seem to wet his hair much at all - not the way it did hers. It didn’t cling to his hair and clump it together. Different textures, she supposed, even though it didn’t _feel_ all that different whenever she touched it.

He was fading out, but Belle wasn’t worried anymore. Autopilot, he’d said. Right? The water still hit him, thousands of little drops bursting upon impact and rolling down. She could still see him that way - a shimmery, ever changing outline of water. It was beautiful. Mesmerizing. She struggled to take her eyes off him for long enough to soap herself up. After a while, he slowly reached for her hand, took it and held it loosely between his fingers, and Belle saw that he was turning visible again.

“Sorry. Bit too good,” he murmured deep. “Did I fade out?”

“Yeah, but it’s alright,” she soothed, reaching up to draw her fingers through his hair to see what it felt like. It was difficult to describe. Rumple was too smooth for the water to cling to for very long. It didn’t catch between each individual strand of hair and stuck them all together; most of it just fell straight down. She wasn’t sure whether to ask him if he wanted to get out of the shower and get dry, but when he gently caught her hand as it played with the hair that framed his handsome face so he could kiss her wrist, Belle knew that he was alright. They could stay in here for a while, watching each other, kissing a little bit, touching slowly. It was only when shower started making that strange noise again that they figured they had better get out before they found out what that hollow metal sound actually meant.

Belle only had one bathrobe, so she told Rumple to stand still on the mat while picked out her fluffiest towel for him. He reached out to take it from her, but that wasn’t the plan exactly, so she snatched it back, making his jaw drop open in theatrical surprise. Belle grinned, moved in close and began to dry him off, even though most of it was just rolling down his body and onto the mat.

“Really?”

His grin was gorgeous and lazy and crooked, and Belle couldn’t deal with it right now. She’d _just_ showered, for heaven’s sake. She threw the towel over his head, muffling his laughter, and rubbed his hair dry.

“I could turn untouchable in the shower and all the water will just fall right from me, you know,” he muttered from behind the towel. It wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t crossed Belle’s mind. This was just a lot more fun, and she wasn’t about to let Rumple pretend he didn’t think so, too.

“We had a dog back home. A red heeler,” Belle began, moving down from his hair to his shoulders and slowly rubbing them dry. A little impromptu shoulder rub.

“Is that relevant at all, darling?” he asked, raising a single eyebrow.

“His name was Jimmy,” she carried on, ignoring his question, even though the new endearment made her lips twitch up into a smile quite involuntarily. _Darling_.

“Jimmy?”

“Yes. Jimmy,” repeated Belle, pausing to try and hold back her laughter; Rumple’s hair was a glorious mess right now. “And Jimmy used to make a mighty fuss whenever it was time for his bath.”

“Did he now?” he asked, his voice a deep growl, amusement hiding underneath.

“Mm.”

Belle caught him with her towel and pulled him close until he was pressed up against her. Perfectly reasonable thing to do - she could rub his back dry with the towel and catch the drops that were traveling down his chest with her bathrobe that way. Practical thing. His soft, knowing laughter right next to her ear was just a bonus.

“But he loved being dried off,” she continued. “To him it was basically a really intense petting session, enhanced with fluffy towels.”

He nudged her earlobe with his nose, muttering, “What are you implying, exactly?”

“Nothing!” she chirped with a shrug, suddenly dropping the towel and shamelessly letting her hands drift down to his _quite frankly_ brilliant bum. “But you do have strikingly similar eyes.”

His laughter was dark, deep, dangerous almost. He looped his arms around her waist and began to press little butterfly kisses to her face, making her squirm and bite her lip.

“Sweetheart?” he purred in between kisses to her jawline.

“Yes?”

“You didn’t think I’d forget about the fifty point bonus I was about to get for laying down seven tiles, did you?”

Ah, fuck.


	16. Saturday, Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last two days of the four days Rumple had promised her feel like the last two days of summer in the middle of October. Sunday might as well be Monday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've said this before and it turned out to be nonsense, but this time I'm pretty sure the next chapter might take a while longer. I never leave a story unfinished, though, so don't worry about that.
> 
> You're all still very lovely and sweet and supportive, and I appreciate it so incredibly much. Thank you. <3

**Saturday**

The park was empty, save for a single black cat that completely ignored them as it crossed their path further up ahead and slinked into the field. The lamp posts that lined the dirt path were few and far between, and some of them flickered weakly like the flame of a candle struggling against a breeze. The smell of dead leaves and maybe a hint of someone burning wood in their backyard earlier that day put a melancholy smile on Belle’s face. The stars with their sharp edges shone cold bright lights up above.

Belle shuffled along the path. In her hand, his. A nocturnal walk had seemed like the thing to do when the movie had ended and a hint of sleep had crept in between their bodies and threatened to tear them away from each other. Belle wasn’t ready to end the day, yet. She wasn’t ready for Sunday’s slowness and certainly not for whatever Monday would bring. She’d spent Saturday morning writing the articles she needed to finish while Rumple sat, read and occasionally brought her coffee. Watching movies with him after, cuddled up snug under a blanket, had helped clear her head just a little bit, but she still felt heavy; stuffed full of useless little facts and word counts creeping slowly up. So out they went, hand in hand, into the night.

Bundled up in her woolen scarf, her beanie pulled over her ears, there was very little for the cold to nip at. Belle had bested it. There was just a little remnant of warmth in her limbs from the single glass of wine Rumple had poured her, too. When she cornered him in the kitchen and kissed him, earlier, she wondered if he could taste it on her lips. It was a desperate kiss that the silence between them had driven her to; clutching at his arms, almost knocking their teeth together. In that moment, Belle felt sad. Scared. Absolutely terrified and hopeless. Her shields were down for a split second, and she felt - even just for a moment - some of what Rumple must have been feeling all this time. What he’d been hiding the past few days, for her sake. Playing along. He had given her a knowing look right after, but didn’t call her out. Belle was grateful for that.

Underneath the wide open sky, there was oddly little to talk about. The walk was slow, his hand was cool, but Belle held on to it as if he were leading her out of a burning building and saving her. She guided him off the path and up a small hill to a bench where they sat down and stared off into the distance for a moment. No words. She didn’t have to ask him to turn visible, because out he came soon enough, looking curiously serene, his arm not quite around her shoulders but resting on the back of the bench behind her.

The clock was ticking. The storm clouds were waiting. They needed something to talk about. Something vague and grand and entirely clichéd.

“Do you think we’re alone out here?”

Yes. That would do.

Rumple made some sort of over the top confused expression, but his lips curled up into a smile nonetheless. He pointed at what looked like a pitch black cat-shaped hole in the fabric of reality - that very same cat, sitting in the field up ahead. Belle snorted, caught his pointing finger, pulled his hand into her lap and slid her fingers in between his. A faint squeeze. Even fainter smiles.

“I meant,” she paused to sweep her free hand across the clear starry sky in a deliberately dramatic gesture, “out _there_.”

“Ohh. Aliens, you mean?”

“Yeah!”

Belle watched him closely, now. If she knew him at all - even just a little bit - he wouldn’t dismiss her obvious desperate attempt at getting some sort of conversation going, ridiculous as the subject may be. And she was right. He seemed to mull it over, his eyes up to the sky and his brow creased in thought.

“Well, I gather that these days, it’s considered arrogant to assume we’re the only life forms in something as…”

He sighed, glanced over at her, then drew out a quick flourish across the sky in a gentle mockery of her own gesture, before.

“… inconceivably vast as the universe.”

He gave her one of those looks that always turned her knees to jelly. Something a little playful but still a tad uncertain. A boy with a crush, eagerly waiting for the teacher to praise him. Belle smiled. He’d been paying attention hadn’t he? Perhaps he’d watched more television than he’d let on. Star Trek fan, maybe. Maybe she could rope him into an X-Files marathon one of these days.

“Yeah, that’s the general consensus. You really have been keeping up, haven’t you?”

He shrugged as if he didn’t care. He smirked because he really, really did, and he couldn’t fool her at all. Belle squeezed his hand again and inched a little closer. Thigh to thigh.

“But do you agree?” he asked.

“That it’s more likely than not that there’s other life out there? Sure. But nowhere near us. And probably just, you know, single cell organisms, maybe. Something boring to look at.”

“Ooh,” he groaned, cringing. “I bet it stings to curb your imagination like that. Like Cinderella’s step sisters cutting off bits of their feet to fit into the glass slipper.”

It was Belle’s turn to cringe, now; she’d forgotten about that part of the fairy tale. She shook off the gruesome mental image and found herself smiling at the first part of what he’d said. There was something so lovely about someone you cared for so deeply just casually letting slip a little fact, an opinion about you in conversation. Something that told you they’d been thinking about you.

“So go on,” he continued, flashing her a handsome grin. “No limitations. Have a proper go at it.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Belle replied, shaking her head. “Our imagination is curbed to begin with. Like, we like to imagine aliens as bipedal. Right? If they’re not, we just see them as animals or monsters.”

“Sure,” he agreed with a serious nod.

“And we always give them a face of some sort. Eyes and a mouth. Eyes for sure, cause we need to have something we can project our own emotions onto. Something to identify with.”

“But only in fiction, dear. If they’re characters in a story, you need something to relate to, of course, but if you’re just sitting here, wondering what they might look like, you’re not restricted by any of that.”

Belle shrugged. “Imagination is fiction, though, and it’s a type of restraint I’m familiar with. Rules don’t feel very restrictive if you know how to play by them. You know?”

Was she babbling, or was she making sense? It could be difficult to tell with Rumple, because sometimes when she was going on and on about something, his eyes would go roving over her face and he would slowly start to smile, and she wasn’t sure whether he was listening or remembering what else her lips could do. But he nodded to let her know he was still following, and Belle carried on.

“And I’m interested in science, but, well, science has its own rules, and I’m sure that to a scientist, they don’t feel restrictive at all. But I’m not a scientist.”

“You’re a writer,” he said, still nodding.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she muttered, shaking her head and waving his words away.

“What?” he blurted loudly, prompting that cat in the distance to take off again, leaping up and away. “Of course you are!”

Huh. She hadn’t even sounded like herself in her own ears. Why had she said that? Where had that even come from? Belle put on a brave, bright grin so that Rumple might wipe that outraged look from his face, and meekly said, “No, of course. You’re right. I am. I don’t know why I said that.”

His look softened to one less shocked and he squeezed her hand. Maybe she was just tired of writing list articles, bored with internet famous animals - a cat is a cat is a cat, honestly - and the shameless click baiting she’d been doing for the past few years. It didn’t feel like writing anymore. It felt like routine. But still, she’d surprised herself, then. If Rumple hadn’t pointed it out to her, she wouldn’t even have stopped to think about it.

“The night you and Gaston had that argument,” he said softly, his stare warm but heavy. “Was that the first time he told you you’d never get published?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that was the first time he actually said it.”

“But you knew that’s how he felt. Before.”

“I think so. Maybe. Subconsciously.”

Curious. She thought she’d gotten rid of the guy, but he was still there in the back of her mind, humming uninterestedly as she talked about something she cared about, skimming over the things she asked him to have a look at and leaving tabs open on job sites - always subtle. God, when she put it like that, when she threw it all together and really had a good bloody look at how he’d made her feel all this time, it started to make a little more sense. Why she hadn’t written anything for herself in all this time. Why she hadn’t even tried. She couldn’t and wouldn’t blame him for all of it, of course, but he certainly hadn’t helped.

“A lack of support is insidious. A lot more destructive than outright discouragement,” sounded Rumple’s soft, soothing voice. A hint of wistfulness just underneath. Belle sensed that there was experience there, behind his words. Not just empathy. His eyes were kind and concerned, his smile very faint and fragile.

“Wow. You are just…”

She stopped, kept the words safe in her mouth for a few seconds to taste them on her tongue and got caught up in his questioning gaze. She stole the arm that was still draped on the bench behind her and hugged it to her chest, forcing him to scoot closer and rest his hand on her knee. Yeah. She’d say it. Belle grinned, brushed a rebellious lock of hair away from his gorgeous face and softly said, “You’re bloody boyfriend material, you are.”

Her heart skipped a beat just as the b-word left her mouth and she felt her face heat up. Too much? Belle quickly scanned his eyes for any sign of an imminent mood swing, but there was only just a _hint_ of a cringe, and it came accompanied by a shy smile, so she figured they were still good. It was still Saturday, after all. And he’d promised. He’d never actually broken a promise, had he?

“Perhaps,” he sighed, giving her knee a friendly, reassuring pat, “somewhere out there there’s a couple of aliens sitting on a hill, wondering if we’re out here.”

Not that elegant a change of subject, but she welcomed the lifeline with open arms and countered, “Or maybe they’re planning on destroying the planet as we speak.”

“Ah, yes. Those aren’t stars. They’re weapons, charging up.”

“Exactly! Lasers! And maybe they’ve already been here.” Belle paused to lower her voice and added, “Maybe I’m a sleeper agent on a reconnaissance mission.”

“That, my darling,” he started, stealing his arm back and wrapping it around her shoulder again, pulling her so close she almost fell into his lap, “would explain a ton.”

“Hey!” she cried, squirming out of his grip to give him her most stern look, despite the fact that she could feel her mouth disobey her brain’s orders and stretch into a grin. Probably in response to his. It was particularly infectious a thing.

“You said it!”

“That does _not_ mean you have to agree!”

Belle could never hold in her laughter with him, and she always caved first. She’d see him wrangle his face into a mock indignant look, and the dam would break and she’d burst out in giggles. He just had to quirk an eyebrow and it was like popping a balloon with a single pin prick; he knew exactly where her soft spots were, and she didn’t mind at all.

She pulled his arm over her shoulders again and cuddled into that same embrace she’d wriggled herself free from before. Perfect fit. The moon must have been somewhere behind them; a thin sliver of silver out of her window Belle caught from the corner of her eye just before they left her apartment. With not a single cloud in sight, however, there was just enough light to give her something else to look at when her neck started hurting from staring up at the stars.

Their bench stood under a grand, solemn old pine tree and looked out over the field where children had flown their kites and dogs had chased after sticks and frisbees (and the occasional panicked squirrel) all summer long. The grass in the field had slowly been changing color until it was no longer that vibrant, delicious looking green. If they’d walked a bit further down the path, they would have been among birches and maple trees, all shedding their colored leaves one by one except for when a sudden gust of wind stole a whole flurry of them in one fell swoop.

But here, up on their hill, stood the pine trees. They braved the wind and the cold as they always did, with creaking, swaying boughs. It still smelled a little bit of summer up here because of the thick layer of dried up pine needles that lay under their feet. The scent never failed to take Belle back to her childhood, which consisted mostly of climbing trees and coming home with rips and tears in her clothes. She used to love trailing her fingers through pine needles when she was little. Now she leaned forward and watched as she dragged the very tip of her left boot through it, drawing a rather lumpy, uneven attempt at a crescent moon.

“You missed the moon landing,” she said, giving Rumple a sideways glance, then dragging her foot through her misshapen drawing in the needle strewn dirt to erase it.

“So did you,” he replied with a quirk of his eyebrow, making her giggle. She leaned back, and his arm curved around her shoulders again.

“But I knew about it, is what I meant,” she clarified. “When I was little, I was convinced I’d go to the moon one day.”

“Of course you were,” he purred, his laughter deep and low and pleasantly close to her ear.

“I wasn’t planning on doing anything to make it happen, though. I knew to be an astronaut you had to be in good shape and everything, but I still ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and didn’t play any sports or anything.”

He laughed again, and this time she couldn’t resist leaning her head onto his shoulder. His kiss to the very top of her head was predictable but always welcome, and Belle felt herself melt just a little bit, sighing with pure, unadulterated content.

“So did you think they’d build a ladder to the moon by the time you’d grown up, or…”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t even think I gave it that much thought, to be honest. It was just a sure thing.”

“You’ve let little Belle down,” he muttered with feigned disapproval, his fingers squeezing her shoulder playfully, teasing out her broadest grin.

“Well then, why don’t you tell your favorite disappointment what _you_ wanted to be when you were little? Do you remember?”

“Oh, dear,” he growled, slumping just a little bit in his seat. “That’s not a trip down memory lane, sweetheart. I need supplies for that journey. Torches, rope, canned food, that sort of thing.”

Belle snorted. She rather loved Rumple’s occasional flair for the dramatic, but she was curious, now, so she tapped him on his thigh and urged him, “Go on. I want to know.”

“When anyone asked me,” he sighed, “I would always say I wanted to be a soldier.”

“But that wasn’t really what you wanted to be?”

“I didn’t _not_ want to be one. Soldiers were strong. Brave. Everything a little boy was told they’d grow up to be. But that wasn’t what I wanted most of all, no.”

The silence made Belle lift her head from his shoulder. Was he alright? She caught him staring at her, looking far more worried than he had any reason being. He quickly looked down into his lap and grinned a shy, faltering grin. Nervous. That’s what it was. He was nervous. Belle felt her stomach clench in anticipation of whatever unbearably endearing confession he’d be making next. She smiled and put her hand on his thigh again, hoping to encourage and reassure him that way. It had done the trick before.

“I wanted to be a tailor,” he murmured.

“A tailor?”

Well, that was anticlimactic.

“Yes. No. More or less. What I meant was - well… I meant _specifically_ …”

Stammering, swallowing, and licking his lips nervously, Rumple looked as if he was just about ready to take off and run.

“I wanted to be a dressmaker.”

And his shoulders tensed, then relaxed, and he sighed. Really? That’s what he’d been so worried about? Belle smiled fondly and told him, “There’s nothing wrong with that!”

On the contrary. She pictured him hunched over a stretch of flowing silk with pins between his lips, his hair falling in front of his eyes, and shiny silver scissors in his deft fingers as he snipped and sewed and looked just as concentrated as he did during their games of Scrabble, and she instantly fell in love with the very mental image of it. It took her quite some effort to stop herself from making some sort of embarrassing high-pitched sound and hugging him close.

“I’ve never actually said that out loud before, I don’t think,” he spoke softly. “My great aunt was a seamstress. Taught me how to sew so I could help her mend tears and reattach buttons. Simple things like that. I learned the rest from watching her, every day until she passed.”

He sounded so small and vulnerable like this, speaking to his lap and not her face, stealing his hand back from her so he could fidget instead. He knew exactly how much he was giving away, here. No father in this story. No mother, either.

“I can’t believe how incredibly talented you are,” Belle said, leaning in a little bit so she could see his eyes, hidden behind his hair. “Leave some for the rest of us.”

“Oh no, no, I wasn’t very good at it,” he mumbled, his mouth twitching into a smile despite his grim tone.

“Did you ever make a dress, then?”

“God, no,” he muttered, shaking his head. He looked up now, his shyness having melted away, and explained, “This was still the 19th century, you have to remember.”

“Ah, of course. Bit too complicated?”

“ _Much_ too complicated. But one time, when I was about… God, how old was I?”

He looked up at the sky as if the answer was spelled out in the stars, his free hand combing his hair back and letting it fall to the front of his face again. Belle wanted to join in.

“Nine? Ten?” He scrunched up his face, shook his head and continued, “Something like that. I asked for a bit of leftover fabric and made this wee frock. A lumpy, simple thing. About doll-sized. Left it on the doorstep of this lass who lived down the street, knocked on the door and ran.”

Belle could feel something glowing in her chest. Love, she supposed. And it was sweet, physical, warm, bubbly and pleasant. She knew her grin was out of control, felt her fingers twitch to reach out and touch him, and suddenly she realized that excited squeal had escaped her lungs after all, because he gave her a half-amused, half-confused look that shamed her into swallowing down her excitement until she looked halfway calm and collected.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… That’s adorable,” she managed. Adorable didn’t even begin to cover it. “Why didn’t you just hand it to her, though?”

“Belle, come on,” he huffed. “Does that sound like something I’d do?”

Yeah. No. It didn’t.

“But did you at least tell her later?”

“I wasn’t going to, but her mother recognized the fabric. My great aunt had made them a pair of kitchen curtains from it a few months earlier. So her mum came over one day and asked my great aunt if she knew where the frock came from, and she said it must have been me. Got a good kicking from her brothers.”

“Oh no! Rumple!”

She couldn’t help but reach out and clutch his arm, now, her heart filled with affection for this child she never knew, wanting to scoop him up and hold him and tell him he’d made such a pretty little dress. He smiled at her and put his large hand over hers as they grasped at his arm.

“Don’t worry. I gave as good as I got,” he assured her. Somehow, she doubted it. He would have been so little, and so gentle, and he’d said ‘brothers’, not ‘brother,’ hadn’t he? Then again, perhaps he was a scrappy, dangerous little thing when he had to be. His hands looked strong. Would they always have been strong?

“Please tell me you at least got a thank you or a hug out of it,” begged Belle.

He laughed, bit down on his smirk for a few seconds, then gave her a mischievous little look and confessed, “A kiss, actually. After her brothers got tired of kicking me around and went home, of course.”

Belle gasped and didn’t even care that she must have looked ridiculous, clutching at him and gasping and cooing and aww-ing like a child at a puppet show. “That’s the cutest first kiss story I’ve ever heard,” she decided with a determined nod.

“What about yours?”

“Oh. Ah, well… I kind of, uh… I’m not really sure.”

“Why, I’m intrigued, Belle!”

He turned to face her on the bench, elbow leaning on the back, one leg over the other, smirking like an absolute devil, as if he knew exactly how embarrassing that particular little story was. Well, he’d opened up to her, hadn’t he? It’d be unfair of her not to show him hers when he’d shown her his.

“We were eleven, I think,” she started with a sigh, folding her hands in her lap. “And we were in my friend’s garage, after school. We used to hang out in there cause it was separate from the house and it was like a little club house, you know?”

“Alright, consider the scene set. Carry on,” he urged, his handsome lopsided smirk now slowly setting her cheeks ablaze.

“It was me, her, and this boy we both liked.”

“Ooh. A love triangle?”

“Shh. Anyway, I guess maybe we kind of also liked each other, cause I can’t remember who I kissed first.”

A beat of confused silence, and then, “Wait, _what_?”

“I don’t remember who I kissed first,” she repeated, drawing her legs up on the bench and hugging them to her body. “So I, uh… don’t know who my first kiss was.”

“You kissed both?”

“Well, so did they!” she cried.

Rumple threw his head back and laughed, and for a moment there Belle was curiously torn between sitting back and appreciating his obvious lack of concern that someone might overhear, and leaning over to get her lips on that gorgeous neck of his.

“You were sitting around with two of your friends and decided you were going to kiss each other?” he asked. With his eyes full of laughter and his grin so wide, Belle didn’t even mind his affectionate ribbing.

“Pretty much,” she chirped, hiding her embarrassed grin behind her knees. Rumple’s laughter was softer, now. Deep and tempting.

“Your idea, yes?”

“Was not!”

“Oh, but I bet it was, though,” he teased.

“No!” she giggled, her voice sounding muffled from where she’d buried her face in her knees.

“Best day of that lad’s life, I imagine.”

“Probably not,” said Belle, wiping a few tear of laughter on the sleeve of her coat. “Turned out he only hung out with us cause he fancied her older brother. Came out as gay a few years later.”

“Oh! Well!”

Belle watched him with a little smile, pleased even though she’d already established that Rumple never flinched at the mention of sexualities of any sort. She often joked about him keeping up with the times and everything, but sometimes Belle wondered if there was something in his past that had softened him to the matter before he first came across - God, what would it have been? Will and Grace? Queer as Folk? The L Word? Belle quickly bit her lip to stop from laughing. The thought of a still sleepy Rumple haplessly floating into someone’s living room mid sex scene was an absolute killer.

“Nevertheless,” said Rumple, “the bragging rights probably lasted him a few years, regardless.”

Belle snorted and let her head fall to his shoulder again. She felt sated. Warm. She knew their secrets were safe with each other, so when she let herself lean into him, it felt like sinking into warm water. A hot bath with the bathroom windows wide open; the cold air did nothing to cool her blood. She allowed the silence its slowly ticking seconds, then let her feet slip off the bench with a deep sigh and put her hand on his leg once more.

“I swear to God, if this conversation hasn’t been leading up to a kiss, Rumple…” she warned playfully.

Her lips were dry in this cold, so his were, too. It was tender and delicate, and as the wind in the trees rustled the needles, Belle felt there was something a little heartbreaking about this kiss. Where before his hand confidently held her jaw or cupped her cheek, his fingertips now lightly touched, as if he were trying to catch a bubble and keep it safe. His forehead touched hers after the kiss, their noses bumped together. She didn’t want to open her eyes for fear of reading her own fears in his.

Because no matter how close she kept him, no matter how many ropes they threw and tied to each other’s ships as they passed on that strange calm sea they were on, the cracks were starting to show. Belle knew it was getting difficult for him to pretend he wasn’t terrified for the both of them. He’d dug himself deeper because she asked him to. Almost every leaf on their tree had fallen to the cold forest floor, and Belle had been focusing on the pretty colors. Not the fact that they were all, one by one, giving up and letting go.

“Let’s be heading back, darling.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“Are you?”

Rumple rolled his eyes and Belle caught his smirk right before he faded out and told her in a stage whisper, “I’m trying to get you into bed.”

But they could still laugh.

…

**Sunday**

Sunday started with a silent agreement to stay in bed as long as they possibly could. Trips to the bathroom or the kitchen were allowed, of course, but that was just about the extent of it. Upon her return from one such trip to the bathroom, Belle found Rumple sitting upright with his back against the headboard and his nose buried in one of her art books. Dressed again. Did he honestly think they were done for the morning, just because she’d put on a pair of panties and a t-shirt?

Because in that case, she had some news for him, she mewled as she crawled into his lap and tossed the book to the side. She turned, settled to lean back against his chest and guided his hand to her thigh, tugging the hem of her t-shirt up just a little bit, just in case he needed an even bigger hint.

Rumple didn’t hesitate to sweep her hair to one side so he could leave teasing kisses on her neck, making her melt right into him with a soft little gasp. His other hand slipped right up her shirt, splayed flat, a gentle pressure to make her feel even closer to him than she already did. His fingers danced on her inner thigh for a moment, then went right where she needed them; feathery touches over the fabric of her cotton panties that became more insistent until, breathing shallow and craning to give him more skin to kiss, Belle jerked away from the touch with a sharp gasp and told him to wait - not just yet.

But more of this, somehow. More of this ‘please, not yet’ feeling, until her body proved her mind weaker and her self-control crumbled in his hands. So far, it had been slow, hot, maddening, and Belle didn’t want it to end just yet. ‘It’ was obviously more than just his skillful fingers making her body writhe in between his spread legs, but she didn’t want to think about any of that when it was still this early in the day and Monday’s storm clouds were still distant on the horizon. Right now she needed his touch in particular to feel timeless on her skin. That was all.

By the time his hand slid down her panties, the heat was white-hot and blinding, and there was not an inch of shadow left in her brain for shame or coyness to dwell, so she asked him outright to draw it out and keep her on the verge, breathlessly whispering, “Can we do this for a while?”

“What’s that, darling?”

If she was in any state to laugh, Belle would have, but all she could do was make some sort of mewling noise she hoped would tell him all he needed to know.

“This?”

Brief, electric pressure, taken away just in time. He knew exactly what she wanted.

“Yeah.”

He kissed her neck again and told her of course, anything - but she had to tell him every time she was close. She nodded in response, stretched her neck so that he might bring his lips to her skin there again and spent what felt like hours in his arms, being teased to the brink and pulled back just in time. By the end of it she was a sweating, incoherent mess at his mercy, and when she came, she came hard and long, with his voice pushing her along and his other arm wrapped tight around her so she wouldn’t buck away.

After her body had stopped shuddering and she could breathe again, his lips on her shoulder were all that kept her from feeling hollow. All of her words had gone, and her limbs were useless bits of bone and flesh that only served to make the man she loved feel unworthy of her, and she needed to get him into the shower quickly and talk him hard and bring him off with her hand before he caught on that she was losing the fight against the sadness, like he always knew she would.

The ever shifting veil of water over his softly glowing body was the most beautiful thing she’d ever witnessed. A little bit like a late summer sunset reflected in a shallow forest stream, but magical. The little strangled sounds he made as he came were a language her ears could never get enough of and her heart was fluent in. They stood and held each other for ages. Her water bill would be through the roof. Belle didn’t care. In the shower, he couldn’t spot the handful of tears that trickled past her defenses.

On the sofa late at night, she lay on his chest, the blankets almost pulled over their heads. No TV. No music. Just the sound of the rain ticking against the windows and their soft, pointless conversation. They’d spent the entire day close enough to touch, never straying. Still it wasn’t enough. Still she was desperate.

“I fancied you pretty much right from the start, you know,” she murmured, drawing circles on his upper arm with a single finger. “I’m not fishing for compliments. Don’t worry. I know you didn’t really feel much of anything at first. I just want you to know that.”

She felt his chest move in silent laughter. It was true. She very clearly remembered sitting there, watching him act all nervous on her sofa, back straight and hands folded in his lap while her greedy eyes took in the sight of him, and realizing that he was handsome.

“I liked your smile,” he replied.

“Oh? I’m amazed you caught me smiling that night,” Belle huffed. “Wasn’t exactly the best night of my life.”

“No, no. I… I meant before.”

“Before?”

“Before you saw me. I’m sorry. That’s creepy, I know.”

“No, it’s alright. I think we’re past that,” Belle assured him with a kiss to his jaw. “Tell me.”

“I’d just woken up. I was looking around to get an idea of how long I’d slept this time. See if anyone had moved. If they looked much older.”

“Oh, right. You said I was the only new tenant the last time you woke up.”

“Exactly. And Gaston was there, too. He was watching television, and you were at your computer. Writing, I think.”

“Very likely.”

“And I didn’t recognize you. Certainly didn’t remember the accent. And you typed a few words, and then you smiled. And I remember thinking… I remember being relieved I could still see beauty in things. I mean, not physically.”

She knew exactly what he meant, but still she growled a playful, “Hey!” and Rumple hurried to add, “You _are_ beautiful! Breathtaking!” Belle felt a little bit terrible about that. Terrible, yet amused. He was too cute sometimes. Too easy to poke at.

“I meant it was just the beauty of seeing someone smile for no real purpose. You weren’t smiling at him. You certainly weren’t smiling at me. You were just pleased with something you’d written, _so_ pleased that you smiled, even though no-one could see. Well, I could, but still. You didn’t know that.”

How could she possibly have avoided falling in love with him? Could she have ripped her heart out and kept it in the freezer? Called a priest for an exorcism?

“Just thought that was beautiful somehow. It blew the dust away from that part of me.”

He sounded unbearably said while he said those pretty words. Belle bit her tongue. Literally. Her own words were writhing deep inside, clawing at each other to clamber up and reach her mouth, but Belle couldn’t let them. She swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed them again until they settled beaten and bruised in the very pit of her stomach. If she said them now, it would be with a purpose, and that’s not what love was for. All she could do was wrap herself around him, command her body to beg him to hold on tight and hope the hours would stretch into days somehow.

But that didn’t happen. Hours were hours and they passed just like they always did, taking them further apart no matter how hard she clung to him. They couldn’t stay in the eye of the storm forever, and Belle knew that, but that didn’t stop her heart from skipping a beat when after the sun had long set and their silence had grown like moss all around the room, Rumple suddenly murmured, “I think it’s past midnight.”

“Have you got some sort of pumpkin carriage to catch?” she offered darkly, trying to sound as if her stomach wasn’t twisting itself into knots. He pried her heavy limbs from him and sat up straight. That sad smile of his should have warned her. He shook his head.

“I should head up.”

“To bed?”

“To the attic.”

Those three words sucked the air out of the room and replaced at with cold. Pure, freezing cold. There was that hollowness again, that distant heartache. There was something else beyond that, though. Something a lot easier to deal with and act upon. Something a little nearer to anger than sadness.

“It’s not Monday yet.”

“It is, Belle,” he softly said.

“Semantics.”

“Belle…”

She felt her hands twitch helplessly, so she balled them into fists and squeezed as hard as she could for one, two, three seconds, then let go and took a deep breath.

“You don’t want to stay with me?” she asked, standing up and walking to the window, where the rain was hitting harder, now. Speaking was difficult. Her throat was constricting, the sounds kept catching, her teeth were almost chattering.

“I do, but I can’t.”

“Why?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. Why?”

When he didn’t respond right away, Belle turned to find him standing by the door. What the hell for? He could just float right up through the ceiling and leave her that way. Was he trying to be symbolic somehow? Cause this was not the bloody time.

“I’m tired. You don’t know how exhausting it is to pretend I’m…”

His sigh was sharp and forceful, and she could just about see him bite down on his lip from here.

“I can’t pretend I’m alive anymore, Belle. I’m dead.”

“Stop saying that! I know you are!”

“Then you know nothing’s changed. We need to start thinking about letting each other go, and I can’t do that when I’m with you.”

_Letting each other go._

He might as well have hit her with a milk truck. The past few days, Belle had known something was coming - but not this fast. Not this hard. Not this painful and sudden and abrupt. This wasn’t just some bloody bandaid for him to rip off in one sharp shot of pain; this was love, for fuck’s sake. Tears welled up but stuck to her eyelids somehow, not one of them rolling down over her cheek. She felt her lip quiver, though. He probably couldn’t tell from where he was standing. Was that why he’d gone all the way over there? Clever. Unfair.

“Stay. Please.”

She didn’t care if her voice shook. She didn’t care if that pulled at his heart and made him feel even a hint of what she was feeling right now. She wanted him to. He deserved to. Still she was paralyzed - frozen to the spot with her arms wrapped around her, and it didn’t help one bit against the cold.

“I’m not leaving like I did before. I promised you that. We’ll talk soon.”

“But I don’t want you in my fucking attic, I want you _with me_.”

“I’m tired,” he repeated grimly. “Every second I spend with you makes it harder. Let me go tonight, Belle.”

How could he sound so calm? How could he look at her like that, as if she was being unreasonable for wanting him here?

“It’s not like I can physically stop you, can I?”

Her own words a boulder to her stomach.

She was angry. She wouldn’t have said that if she wasn’t. For a moment there, he looked surprised. And then he looked nothing at all, because he was gone. Not just invisible, but gone from the room entirely, pulling out the carpet from under her feet. She felt his absence like a chill in her bones, and now he was up in his attic, on his own. He’d made her fall in love with him and then he left her standing there, hugging herself like a pathetic, sad child.

He wasn’t even wrong.

…

Belle couldn’t stay angry. She wished she could. She had fallen asleep while angry before, but her mind would never allow her any rest when she was sad. And that’s exactly what she was, now, as she lay in her bed and stared up at the ceiling, recruiting gravity in the fight against the ever growing flood of tears behind her eyes. Alone.

Her last remaining ounce of anger told her that it wasn’t fair that she should be sleepless. It didn’t matter for Rumple; he didn’t have to go to work in the morning, did he? He didn’t even have to sleep every single night! You could almost say he owed her her sleep. Yes, exactly, he owed her that. And that’s why she gathered her comforter and her pillow, threw it off the mezzanine, grabbed her phone and as quietly as possible carried the whole lot out of her door. Didn’t even lock it behind her. Didn’t care. Her weary legs brought her to Rumple’s attic hatch. She called his name softly, just once. Seconds passed, and the ladder came sliding down. Good.

“A little help, please,” she whispered.

“With what?"

She remained silent as she held out the bundle she’d made of her pillow and comforter.

“Oh, good God,” he groaned.

He was still invisible. He must have just peeked his head out of the hatch to see her standing there, ready for a sleepover.

“Please.”

And up it all floated. Please really was the magic word. Belle climbed after, and hauled up the ladder herself. When he came out, he was shaking his head and nervously drawing his fingers through his hair, his brow deeply creased and his eyes to the ceiling as if he were waiting for some sort of deity to tell him how to deal with this.

“What are you doing, Belle?” he sighed. He did sound tired now, and it almost made her feel guilty for imposing herself when she did understand on some level that he needed a break from being strong for her, and that had a right to the freedom to feel his feelings just as Belle did hers.

_Almost_.

“If you won’t stay with me, I’ll stay with you.”

“But I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t be positive for you.”

“Then don’t be positive. Just be here. I can’t sleep without you right now, Rumple, and I don’t care if that sounds sappy, because it’s not. It’s just a fact. And it’s your fault.”

Well, okay, perhaps that was a childish thing to say, but it seemed to do the trick, because his shoulders slumped and his look softened, and the only thing that left his annoyingly clever mouth was a grumpily mumbled, “Who’s haunting who here, exactly?”

Belle deserved an Oscar for holding back her laughter.

She made herself a little nest next to his desk. Blankets upon blankets and her comforter to finish the picture, cocooned safe in layers of downy softness on the dusty floor of Rumple’s attic room. He turned off the light bulb but went back to his desk to sketch. Belle had her back turned to him, curled up with the comforter almost covering her face, but she heard the scratches and taps of his pencil moving against the paper, while the sound of the rain and the wind outside was growing louder and louder, rivaling the storm that first brought him back to her. She listened to a few minutes of that before she heard the pencil drop to the desk and Rumple heave a heavy sigh. No sound of footsteps to tell her where he was, but it didn’t matter, because she felt his arm over her waist and his forehead touching the back of her head soon enough.

That’s when the tears welled up and poured over - finally. She made a swift move to wipe them away, which was probably what alerted him to the fact that she was crying. Not that he mentioned it. He just lay there with his arm over her, letting her cry into her pillow, being close. Hopelessness, it felt like. Something dark and hollow but heavy at the same time, and she thought the sadness would go away if she just got him close to her again, but it was too late for that. The bad things she’d been struggling to ignore, the gloomy clouds she’d turned her back on, they were demanding to be acknowledged, now. They’d broken through her defenses and if Rumple decided to tell her _I told you so_ right now, she wouldn’t really be able to blame him.

Well, it’d be an asshole thing to do, but she’d understand.

She wished she could stop crying, though. At first, she thought she could just let the tears out and keep it at that, but her body betrayed her with a series of tiny, silent sobs that were nevertheless obvious with his arm over her waist like that. He felt it. He must have.

“I wish I were alive,” he murmured.

That hurt. She didn’t want to hear that and she didn’t want to think about it; she didn’t want to know if she felt the same way. Why did he say that? They shouldn’t say such things. She needed to stop sobbing. How many tears could she possibly still have left in her, for fuck’s sake?

“I wish we’d met in your library,” he added, so softly her body stilled her convulsing lungs so that she might hear him more clearly. His thumb rubbed soothing circles on her waist. She couldn’t cry when she wanted so desperately to listen.

“I’d have walked past one day and saw you from the window, and suddenly I’d have had this all-consuming urge to go and get myself a library membership card, even though I prefer to buy my books and keep them.”

Her lips twisted slowly into a smile. Belle tasted salt on them.

“I’d probably act as if it was all a great big bother, but you’d see right through that stupid act, wouldn’t you? And I’d have been there every week, sometimes even twice, borrowing books I wasn’t really that interested in because I ran out of real excuses to come see you months ago.”

“Months?” she cried. “You think I would have let that drag on for _months_? Have you met me, Rumple?”

His own laughter made hers bubble up through the tears and the sniffles.

“Well then,” he sighed. “How do you think this would have played out?”

Ah, sweet, clever man. This was his way of comforting her, wasn’t it? He couldn’t tell her everything would be alright, but he could be here (he’d promised, after all) and he could talk to her and make her talk in turn. Distract her with words and his soothing voice, even make her laugh just a little bit. A bedtime story, because he knew that’s how she worked. What her mind ran on.

Belle turned over to face him and saw him looking sweetly concerned, his brow furrowed, his gaze purposeful and alert. When his eyes found hers red and wet, his stare melted into something softer.

“I’d have dropped hints, first,” said Belle with a determined nod, wiping a few tears from her cheek. “But you would have ignored them, because you have no idea how charming and attractive you are. You’d have brushed it off.”

“That’s probably true,” he muttered. “What kind of hints?”

“Something relatively subtle at first. You know, a lingering look here and there. An obvious ring finger check.”

“A what?”

“To see if you’re married!”

“Oh! I see! Well, I wouldn’t have noticed any of that.”

“Which is why I’d ask if you were checking out books for your partner, too. Cause, you know, I’m guessing you’d check out a lot of books, and maybe she or he could use a library membership, too.”

“That’s clever,” he said, smiling, “but I think I’d just answer no.”

“At which point I’d know you were playing clueless, and I’d straight up ask you if you were single.”

“Which I’d still refuse to construe as flirting.”

“Yeah, but then some part of you would have to admit I’m at least _acting_ interested, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“And if I started flirting then, you’d probably flirt back and tell yourself it’s just playful banter.”

His smile grew into a grin.

“You have me all figured out, don’t you?”

“Yup,” she said with a shrug. “So from there on out, I’d have two options. I could ask you out. I’d make bloody sure you knew that it was a date, too. Something really casual. Maybe just ice cream.”

“I do miss ice cream.”

“Chocolate or vanilla?”

“Pistachio.”

“Really?”

“Don’t judge me. What’s the other option?”

“Well. I could do exactly what I actually did.”

“Drag me to a dark corner of the library and snog me senseless?”

“Yup.”

They lay there smiling for a moment. Their bedtime story was over. It had ended somewhere where their real one began. She didn’t want to think about what that meant. Belle swallowed, fit her head under his chin and hoped he’d join her under her comforter soon.

“It wouldn’t have been you,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“That man in the library. It wouldn’t have been you. Not really. Not the man I want.”

“He would have been better.”

The rain wasn’t quite so loud anymore. The wind had stopped howling. She shook her head. No. No, he wouldn’t have been better. It didn’t matter anyway, because that man wasn’t out there. He didn’t exist. Why were they talking about him? _He_ was the ghost. Not the man she was looking at right now.

“Perhaps you should talk to your friend,” whispered Rumple. Perhaps she should. “I can’t fix this, Belle. I’m what’s making you sad.”

“That’s not true, but I won’t argue anymore. You don’t have to fix anything. I just need you to help me sleep for now.”

“I’ll go down to your flat with you, if you want. I don’t want you to get a cold.”

“No. This is good.”

His body left hers to turn the desk light off, enveloping them in complete darkness. He crawled under the covers with her, because he knew that’s what she wanted. He pulled her close and tucked her under his chin because that’s what they both wanted - they always ended up like that.

But he didn’t kiss her, even though she wanted his kiss more than anything in the world. Always and everywhere, their lips at each other’s disposal. That’s all she wanted.

“I’ll tell Ruby you said hi,” she whispered.

She understood, though. He honestly thought that would make it easier in the end.

“I’d like that.”

But Belle knew taking away their kiss was like quitting heroin cold turkey.

“Night, Rumple.”

It wouldn’t make them crave each other any less intensely.

“Night, Belle.”

It would just make a mess.


	17. Collisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Staying away isn't easy when the pull between two people is so strong it overrides common sense. Belle enlists the help of the people she loves to come to some sort of decision. In the mean time, they keep colliding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which it becomes apparent that I have failed the Bechdel test but decide to forgive myself.
> 
> Long chapter (a little over 12k), because I didn't want to end it on a negative note and was a little intimidated by all of the weepy comments last chapter, haha. I won't tell you how many chapters I've got left, but we're close. Don't despair. I hate unhappy endings. We just need to get the drama out of the way.
> 
> It's long, and there's a lot of stuff. Hope you like the stuff.
> 
> Thank you for hanging in there, and leaving comments, and being awesome. You guys are amazing.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry! I’ve been going on about Rumple for ages now, and you said you wanted to talk about your love life when you came over last week.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Ruby laughed, “that can wait. It’s not even half as interesting as your thing.”

“Tell me his name, at least!”

“Andy,” she said quietly, her grin wide as could be, her eyes full of something that made Belle like him already. Making her smile like that was definitely a requirement she could cross off the list already.

“Cute.”

“He is! But yeah, cute name, too. He’s a musician. A drummer.”

“Nice arms?” giggled Belle.

“Nice _everything_."

The diner was pleasantly busy, and her coffee was as sweet as she could make it without Ruby forcefully taking away the sugar shaker. The sun was out and the entire town seemed to be in a pretty great mood, somehow. That couldn’t possibly have been true, of course, but there were smiles all around her, and Belle knew that if the sad look on Rumple’s face as he watched her climb down from the attic this morning hadn’t been floating around in the back of her mind, she would be pretty cheery, too.

But as it stood, Belle was having to put a lot of effort into keeping herself together. Perhaps if the diner hadn’t been this busy, she might have broken down in tears already, but there was something else holding her back. A fear of putting it into words, perhaps. Words were the realest, most powerful thing she knew, and she was always wary of speaking things into existence. Over her plate of bacon and eggs, Belle had told Ruby many of the things she’d promised she would, but she hadn’t gotten to the really sad part yet, nor the part where she admitted to having fallen in love with a man whose bones lay in the cemetery about a brisk twenty minute walk from where they were having lunch right this moment. So far, she’d just filled her in on the things she couldn’t really have told her while Rumple was there with them. How he maimed himself so he could go home to his pregnant wife. How he sacrificed himself to save his son’s life. How he’d told her things he’d never told anyone else before, and she did, too. How they’d been flirting and bonding all this time, and how brilliant a cook he was. That sort of thing.

But it didn’t take Ruby very long to get to the more salient questions.

“So. You guys kissed, right?”

And then some. Belle felt her face heating up, despite her mood. She couldn’t help it; when she said it, she remembered it. Almost felt it, even. The softness of his lips, his fingertips on her skin, the look in his eyes when he pulled away and saw what his kisses did to her…

“You could tell?” Belle asked, clearing her throat with a completely unnecessary cough.

Ruby nodded and explained, “There’s nervous lip glances, and then there’s what you two were doing when I was over there.”

“Which was?”

“Reminiscing lip stares. I was totally third wheeling you guys,” said Ruby, grinning her smuggest grin and stealing some bacon off her plate.

“Yeah,” Belle admitted. “Yeah, we kissed.”

“Does it feel weird?” she asked, lowering her voice and leaning in, her eyebrows raised.

Belle stifled a laugh and shrugged.

“Not at all. He feels normal. Just a little softer or smoother, maybe. Well, I mean, he doesn’t produce saliva or anything, so it feels different, but not in a bad way. He’s, uh… really good.”

At many a thing. Ruby would figure out the rest soon enough. Perhaps she already knew and was just giving her a break. Ruby always knew more than she let on. More than she realized herself sometimes, even.

“Oh my God!” she laughed. “I just thought you might have had an awkward peck on the lips kind of deal going on, but you’re bringing _saliva_ into it! First base with the guy, are you kidding me?”

“Ruby!” she giggled, burying her burning face in her hands. She felt her hand on her head, patting her like a puppy once or twice. Belle peeked between her fingers and saw her play with the straw in her milkshake.

“I’m sorry. He seems nice,” she offered, throwing her a quick curious glance over the rim of her glass. Ah, and there it was. She knew. Belle could tell from the look in her eyes that she was about to ask her - or tell her, maybe.

“Yeah. He is,” she replied quietly.

It only took a few seconds of silence for Ruby to point her arrow, draw her bow and shoot, “Sweetie, did you go and fall in love with a ghost?”

To hear the words out loud was a strange thing, and it stung just as much as she thought it would. She felt her lip begin to quiver so she bit it just in time, but Ruby had spotted that little tell anyway, and without a moment’s hesitation stood up, took her hand and guided her into the kitchen and out the back door to the little courtyard behind the diner. By the time they sat down on the creaky wooden bench in the last remaining spot of sunlight, Belle had spilled all of the tears she’d allowed herself for the day, and now she was sniffling softly, wiping her cheeks dry. Ruby’s arm was around her waist, her lips leaving comforting kisses in her hair. No words yet.

Well, not theirs.

“Ruby, I’m gonna need you to cut your break short, the - ”

Standing in the doorway carrying a stack of empty plates in her strong arms was Ruby’s grandmother, whose stern expression melted away the moment she laid eyes on Belle’s tear-streaked face and her red eyes, and made way for a concerned smile in an instant.

“Oh! Belle! Hi!”

“Hi. The eggs were delicious,” she sniffled, putting on a brave smile.

There were knowing looks and nods exchanged, comforting smiles flashed, and then finally she decided, “Never mind, Ruby. I can handle it.”

“I’ll close up today.”

“Sure.”

Back in the diner, the light had looked warm and reminded her of summer, but out here, the air was cool and the sunlight didn’t do much to warm her. Birds chirped overhead, plates clattered in the kitchen, _someone_ cursed pretty loudly.

“Are you going to tell me we can’t be together?”

It was difficult to get those words out.

“I don’t know,” Ruby said. “I’m gonna listen, first.”

A story, then. But where to start? Her breakdown in the cemetery? That night he stayed next to her in bed? Flirting in the library and launching herself at him? Ruby knew so many little bits and pieces of their story, but not all of it. Belle may have been a writer, but when she had to piece everything together like this on the spot without pen and paper or a keyboard, it was different. It was difficult.

“I was attracted to him pretty much right from the start,” Belle sighed. Yeah, that would do, she decided. That was as good a start as any, if a little predictable.

“Well, he is handsome. Can’t blame you there.”

“Right? And charming, and funny, and I just love his voice so much. It’s not even the accent, I just…”

Ruby tried not to laugh, but she felt her body shake once or twice with her arm around her like that. Belle sighed and reigned herself in, determined to stick to some sort of semblance of a narrative.

“We became friends, I think, and then after a while…”

“It turned into a crush?”

“Yeah. And then somewhere along the line… I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but it doesn’t matter. I love him. And I realize that’s crazy fast, but I just _know_ , Rubes.”

“It’s alright. It happens.”

Does it really? Do people really meet ghosts and fall in love with them in three weeks’ time? Regular occurrence, that? Cause in that case, Belle wouldn’t be opposed to a support group.

“Did you tell him? Or did you just kiss him?” Ruby asked.

“I dropped massive hints, first, but he didn’t notice. Or he ignored them on purpose. Both, maybe.”

“He does seem like the type.”

“Mhm. I think some part of him knew I was falling for him, cause he tried to warn me away a few times. Tried to leave, too. Didn’t work, though, obviously.”

“Backfired on him, huh?”

“Yeah. And, long story short, he was teasing me at the library and I couldn’t take the tension anymore, so I lunged.”

Ruby laughed and pulled her closer for a tight hug.

“ _Lunged?_ ”

“Well, no. A slow motion lunge, maybe. More or less.”

“Bet slow motion for you is breakneck speed for that guy.”

“Oh, he got over it,” said Belle, dismissing the comment with a wave of her hand. “I can’t stress enough how _good_ he is, Rubes. You ever see those Youtube videos of people massaging their sleepy pets so that they kinda zone out?”

“Belle!” she half gasped, half laughed.

“I’m serious! The man can hypnotize me!” she cried, grinning despite her mood. “There’s this thing he does, right, where he kisses me really softly, and he’s holding my chin or my cheek or he’s got his hand just resting against my neck, and he pulls back and he just gives me this _look_ , Ruby - I can’t tell you what it does to me!”

Belle let Ruby get out all of her laughs before she went on to the tough bits; the indecipherable pile-up of problems and potential disasters she could barely make head nor tail of, and didn’t really _want_ to.

“So you’re in love,” said Ruby after gathering her composure and wiping away her amused smirk. “What about him?”

“I think he loves me, too,” she replied quietly but confidently.

“You think? Have you told him?”

“No. And he hasn’t told me. But I think it’s obvious.”

Ruby sighed and sat back, her arm dropping from her shoulder with a final, reassuring squeeze.

“From what I’ve seen, which isn’t much, I’d agree. Whatever looks you were giving him, he was giving you right back. That’s what I mean.”

Belle nodded and let their silence take over for a while. There was enough going on around them for it not to feel stilted or awkward, anyhow; the sound of orders being called, cars driving past, birds settled on the electric wires chirping endlessly on - life carrying on as usual even though she, herself, was firmly stuck.

“But something’s wrong,” offered Ruby after a while.

And that ‘something’ was turning out to be a compressed ball of individual issues that all added up to something dark and huge and intimidating standing in between her and the man she loved. Not death - Belle refused to let that be the thing that drove them apart. Why would it? They’d connected over it, hadn’t they? Why would it be an issue now? No, it was just every little difference and practical issue she’d been too stubborn to acknowledge, piled up and threatening to topple over and bury them.

“He doesn’t think we can be together,” said Belle softly, looking down at her folded hands in her lap. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ruby nod. Slowly. Carefully.

“Because he’s…”

“Long dead,” Belle continued, deadpan. She was past dancing around those words, now. They weren’t bad words. They were just words like any other.

“And because he thinks it’s going to end badly, he’s already trying to pull away?”

“Yeah,” said Belle, impressed but not surprised by the fact that Ruby had sniffed out the issue in a matter of minutes. “That’s exactly it. And I get it, but really I don’t, Rubes. The fact that he died decades ago didn’t stop us from falling for each other, so why should we let it stop us from being together?”

Ruby whistled and looked up at the sky, where only a few little white clouds dotted the great big bright blue. She took a moment to mull it over, then softly said, “I can’t say I don’t see where he’s coming from. This isn’t exactly a boring, normal, predictable girl-meets-boy situation.”

Belle nodded but shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Because did it, really? That’s why she was here, she supposed. For someone who knew her and cared about her to tell her what to do and what to think, what to feel and what to say to him when she got back home and sought him out in his dusty old attic.

“I don’t want normal. I want him.”

“Look, Belle,” she sighed, putting a gentle hand on her knee. “This is something most people don’t know about you, cause they don’t expect it, but you’re _way_ impulsive. You see something you like, you decide you want to have it, you circle it like a shark for a while, and then you charge. But in between spotting that thing and chomping on it, you don’t really give anything else much thought. Not a lot of risk calculation going on in that clever head of yours.”

A shark. Belle grinned; a split second flash of teeth before all of the sudden she found the words she thought she couldn’t utter, and spat them out hurriedly. “Yeah, okay, but I’m scared too! All of these things he’s worried about, I get them. But I can’t show that fear, can I? Cause he’s taken that role and I have to balance it out. And that’s fine, I can do that. I _have_ been doing that. It’s just… I wish he could forget about all of that stuff for a while, until it actually poses a problem, and be happy with me. Like we were the past few days. For the most part.”

Ruby was nodding throughout, concerned and attentive, listening closely but very obviously waiting for her to finish her little outburst and let her smack some truth into her as kindly as anyone could. It took Belle a few seconds of silence to realize she was pouting, and she quickly straightened herself and tamed her face back into some sort of neutral expression instead.

“I think that might be part of the problem,” Ruby mused. “What if he’s doing the same thing? What if he’s being so negative because you’re being so positive? I get that you think you need to reassure him all of the time, but maybe it’s having the opposite effect.”

“I guess that’s possible,” sighed Belle. She’d hated the thought of reducing the love she felt for this man to a series of practical issues to overcome one by one so much, she’d ignored every single one of them. In the darkness, hidden away in the back of her mind, they’d had the chance to breed, tangle and grow into this huge, seemingly indomitable monster Belle was too intimidated to even acknowledge.

“I think maybe both of you are overcompensating for each other. And if you don’t talk about the obstacles you two might have to face, you’re letting him carry all of that weight on his own.”

Belle blinked at her. It almost made sense - it really did - but not quite just yet, and she itched to grab that tiny thread of comprehension and unravel the entire thing so that she might find the solution to this mess. She looked at her friend pleadingly, waiting for her to explain.

“Look at it this way,” Ruby continued. “Both of you are in a jungle somewhere. There’s a bunch of tigers and jaguars and venomous snakes and poisonous berries and piranhas and stuff.”

“Do tigers and jaguars share habitat?” Belle mused, perhaps channeling a little bit of Rumple’s playful contrarian spirit. What a strange time for that kind of ridiculous couple-y thing to surface, when their future together was so unsure.

“I’m trying to help,” Ruby chided, only just able to bite back her grin.

“Sorry.”

“Now, Patrick Swayze over there -”

“Nice reference,” Belle snorted. Maybe Rumple would have gotten that one; it seemed like there was always at least one channel airing that movie.

“Thank you. Are you going to let me finish?”

“Sorry.”

“Your ghost keeps hearing twigs snapping, snakes hissing, apex predators growling, and he sees you reaching for poisonous fruits and trying to pet cobras. Constantly.”

“But - ”

“Hold on, not done yet. This is a really good metaphor. Well it would be if you let me finish it.”

“Sorry.”

“Now, I know you think he’s exaggerating. That a lot of these scary sounds and eyes glowing in the dark are imaginary, or just not that threatening.”

Belle nodded.

“You’ve probably tried to convince him of that already, right?” asked Ruby.

“Yeah. A bit.”

“Did it work?”

She shook her head.

“Of course it didn’t,” Ruby continued. “Cause it doesn’t matter how many of those sounds are imaginary and how many of them mean certain violent death - sorry about the phrasing.”

“I’ve said worse,” Belle mumbled.

“He feels like he has to overreact to everything because you won’t react at all.”

Belle slumped in her seat with a great big sigh. The idea that she might have been pushing him away by trying to keep him close was a particularly unpleasant one, but it made sense. God, she should have gone to see Ruby about this sooner, before she spent those days with him doggedly ignoring his fears, waltzing over his feelings as if they meant nothing.

“He said we kind of balance each other out. But it’s not a peaceful balance,” she muttered.

“So you’re constantly adjusting?”

“Not constantly. But when we do, it’s like a u-turn. Or swerving to avoid a deer in the middle of the road, or something.”

“Isn’t that exhausting, sweetie?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

_Maybe_. As if she hadn’t been losing sleep over him since they met.

“But what if it’s worth it?”

_What if._ As if she wouldn’t stake her life on it.

Ruby nodded and pulled her into another hug, rocking their bodies gently from side to side.

“I think you should figure that out together.”

In the kitchen, another plate crashed to the floor.

…

This morning, Belle had stirred when her cellphone chimed, turned around in his embrace and sleepily tried to reach his lips with hers. She must not have realized. She couldn’t reach if he tilted his head up a little bit, so he was safe, but he knew that if he had to do that one more time, he would crumble.

There were four things he now knew for certain. The first was still that he was very much dead. No change there. The second - unwavering despite his best efforts (which were, admittedly, half-hearted) - was that he loved Belle French. The third was that he was a liar. The fourth was that he was stuck.

He’d discovered the third and fourth facts this morning.

With a heavy feeling in his stomach (the one that had rotted away into the dirt some time ago) he decided to break the promise he made to Belle and tried to disappear. In the deeper sense, that was. Not just turn invisible. He could still do that. No, he tried to do the thing he’d told her he wouldn’t without talking to her about it. The thing he should have done some time ago.

So when she’d left for work and he was all alone again, he sat himself down at his desk, closed his eyes and focused on the darkness, like he did before. He tried to trigger whatever it was that made the colors go away and pulled blackness over him like a thick, suffocating blanket, but it didn’t work. Not even close. Not even a hint of desaturation. It was that blue. That piercing, beautiful, damnable blue that pulled at him and kept him there. The picture of her in his mind was too bright, and he hadn’t been the same since she called him back from that darkness. He hadn’t been the same at all.

When he’d left the first time, Belle only had her dainty fingers lightly grasping at his sleeve, and he might have ignored her voice that time and gone on disappearing. But now? Now she stuck to him like glue. Like unbearably sweet toffee to his back teeth. A fairground tune he couldn’t get out of his mind. A floater in his eye. A familiar ache in his bones and a lighthouse keeping guard in the distance and calling his tired old ship to harbor. It just didn’t get dark enough anymore.

And he was connected, now. He was no longer singular and loose in space, but strangely spread out and not entirely here in this attic, somehow. Some part of him was with her in that library of hers, perhaps stuck to her as much as she was stuck to him, because she was up in his attic, too. Blue, soft, warm and sticking to his ghostly self like a layer of skin. When he asked her who had been haunting who the night before, he hadn’t really been joking.

But it wasn’t just this golden thread looped around every single one of his fingers and strung from his ribcage to hers, anymore. There were other threads now, and they’d slowly been weaving him into this world he should have left decades ago. A thread tied to a branch on a tree in the forest where she almost kissed him and thought he was clueless. Another one tied to that chain link fence outside where she’d kept him centered when he thought he was going to lose himself in the din. And there was kissing in the library, teasing her in the supermarket, talking softly on their bench in the park late at night - each memory tied to him like a helium balloon to a clumsy child’s wrist.

He was in all of those places, and he was with other people now, as well. There was that golden haired child with the superhero pajamas who wouldn’t have been there had he not fallen in love with that whirlwind of a woman over a century ago, and there was Ruby, who accepted his existence as if there were nothing strange about it at all.

So he wasn’t just here, but that didn’t mean he was spread thin. If that had been the case, then it would have been easy for him to disperse and return to that nothingness. No, strangely, there was more of him somehow. More than before. Those little bits he’d left behind in all of those places she took him, those bits of him he’d left in the care of his sweet librarian - all of them had taken root in this world. Cuttings turned saplings, because they had grown - even if just an infinitesimal amount - lovingly watered by the blue in her eyes.

He never used to think in living words like that. No watery thoughts, no green, no light or warmth in his dreary inner monologues. Now all his mind would do when he told it to give up and let go was shake its head and harp on about light and life, all the while tugging on the strings that kept him tied to this world. Those strings made him who he was, now. He was more here than ‘there’ and in a way, it was beautiful, but it was going to hurt so much more when he pulled all of the leaves, tore out his roots, broke off his branches and left this world for the unknown. It hurt just thinking about it.

There was no other way, and Belle just had to let him go. With any luck, Ruby had managed to talk her into doing just that, and if he could leave, then he could end this before things were spoken that couldn’t be unspoken. If she gave him permission to, then he could cut through every single thread with ease and just go. What could possibly keep him here if the woman he loved agreed that they shouldn’t love each other at all?

When he heard her small voice underneath his attic hatch, he dropped down and put a hand on her shoulder to guide her back to her apartment. It was still too early for her to risk climbing up to the attic - there was a greater chance she’d be spotted, now.

God, she was beautiful. Her cheeks and the very tip of her nose and ears were red, nipped at by the cold. Her hair underneath that hat of hers was messier than it usually was, and the way she dropped down considerably whenever she stepped out of her heels always made him smile. But he forced himself not to, today. No smiles.

“I had lunch with Ruby, and we talked,” she said, playing with the hem of her blouse in her nervous little manner. He nodded. Neither of them were planning on sitting down, it seemed. She was standing next to her sofa, having thrown her coat over the back, like she often did. Perfectly good coat stand right where he was standing, but no. Never the coat stand.

“And she made me realize that I haven’t been very realistic.”

This was it. He hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. Some sad part of him thought he might still have some time with her. Another nap, maybe, and a few more kisses. One Scrabble victory for him, at least. But it was just as well. The sooner they ended this, the less it would hurt, and the clock was ticking. Good thing he hadn’t told her, then, that he loved her. That no matter how hard he’d tried to stop it from happening and no matter how illogical it was, he was in love with her.

“I won’t say I’ve been naive, cause I don’t think that’s it exactly.”

No? Could have fooled him.

“But I’ve been acting like your feelings aren’t valid, and I shouldn’t have. I know you’re worried. I know we could never be like any other couple, but that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

Oh, God. She didn’t get it. She honestly didn’t understand. The utter impossibility of their every having some semblance of a normal life together wasn’t getting through her pretty skull. He sighed, slow and deep. How was he ever going to end this?

“I’m worried, too,” she continued. Could she not stop her voice from shaking like that? It was making him want to rush towards her and gather her to his chest. “I know you don’t think we could… I know you think there’s no future for us.”

“There isn’t,” he said.

No hesitation, even though the words came with some effort. Don’t show any sign of weakness, he thought to himself. Just don’t give her an opening to shine her light through. Harsh. Cold. Terse. Quick.

“But why don’t we just - ”

“Pretend?” he huffed.

“Talk it out. Just talk it out. Everything we’ve been holding back. Go on, tell me what you’re afraid of. Tell me all of the reasons we shouldn’t be together. Every last one. I’ll only shoot them down if I don’t agree it’s something that should keep us apart.”

Oh. He felt his shoulders slump and his mouth drop slightly open. It was like he’d been straining at the leash, barking and growling and now that the leash had snapped, he couldn’t quite bring himself to bite. And yet, this wasn’t a trick. The look she was giving him wasn’t smug, or skeptical. She was open and fragile, her eyes wide and her eyebrows knitted together, her lips parted in sweet concern.

“I can’t take you out to dinner,” he said, swallowing down the real concerns just in case the more practical matters would do the trick.

“You can cook,” she replied with a shrug.

“It’s not about the food, Belle.”

“I agree. It’s about being with you.”

The look she gave him then was smug, to say the least, but he could tell it was a cover; her voice was still shaky, and she’d wrapped her arms around her chest defensively. Or as if she was comforting herself, perhaps.

“You can’t introduce me to your friends or your family.”

“You’ve already met my best friend, and my dad’s the only family I’ve got left.”

“You’re going to make new friends,” he fired back, shaking his head. “You’re going to have to lie to them.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Figure it out? Figure it out. That was her entire plan, wasn’t it? Improvise this train wreck of a love of theirs. He took a step closer without really knowing why, but it was still safe. They weren’t nearly close enough to touch. Perhaps he’d just wanted to see her eyes better. He caught her flighty, nervous gaze and softly said, “I can’t kiss you in public.”

“You can make me come four times in private,” she muttered.

Oh, good God, she was impossible, and she was magnificent, and he now knew he’d never stood a chance against her at all. Of course he loved her. Look at her, standing there, brave but trembling, strong but almost literally holding herself together.

“I can’t do the groceries for you. You’d always have to be the one to do it.”

“Don’t care.”

“But that goes for everything, Belle. Every single thing. I can’t deal with the landlord, or walk the dog, or drop something off at the post office, or go and get you medicine when you’re ill. I can’t take care of you the way you should be taken care of.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of,” she scoffed, jutting out her chin like a defiant toddler. He really should have seen that one coming.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he sighed. “Lovers take care of one another, and I’ll fall short. Maybe not soon, but one day. Something will trip me up.”

He was standing close enough to see her swallow. It made him think he was getting through to her, and God, was he ever glad he was. Because this was torture. Absolute torture. Tearing down their castle as he was, smashing it to bits when he knew it was the most beautiful thing he’d built since he first held his son in his arms, he was almost in physical pain. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to push her away, and he didn’t want to break this thing they’d built for themselves, but he had to. This would be so much easier if she just picked up a sledgehammer and did her part, but no. Not her.

“You won’t fall short,” she spoke quietly. “You take care of me, Rumple, in all the ways I need you to.”

The big guns, then, because her pretty words were starting to coil themselves around his heart and pull him closer. The painful truths. The things he hoped he wouldn’t have to say, because they implied the things he couldn’t possibly tell her. He straightened his back, harshened his stare and hoped she wouldn’t read between the lines.

“We couldn’t get married.”

“Oh who cares!” she cried without missing a single beat. Good. She was too riled up, and too focused on hitting every target he was putting up for her to realize what it was he’d just confessed to.

“Perhaps I do,” he fired back.

“Do you really, Rumple?” she asked, her voice deeper and an eyebrow raised. Of course he didn’t, but he’d been hoping she might. Her arms were no longer wrapped around her chest in that defensive gesture, but crossed. Bad sign.

“I couldn’t give you a child.”

“Who said I wanted any?”

Oh. Well. She’d just swatted that missile out of the air like a fly with yesterday’s newspaper and left him standing there, wordless and looking like the fool he felt, because that was the ace up his sleeve, really. That was the one thing he thought would drag her back down to earth, and now he was out of ammo. She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head, pretended to wait for the next objection she knew very well would never come.

“I’ll give you one,” Belle said, stepping closer, “because you’re obviously never going to think of it yourself.”

He took a few steps back, but she just closed the new distance between them without blinking. Her big blue eyes were kinder now that she was reaching out to pull him over the line, and he felt his resolve weaken. This wasn’t good.

“I can’t show you off. I can’t brag about my handsome boyfriend. I can’t parade you around town and tell everyone that I was lucky enough to find you.” She shrugged and chirped, “That’s it! That’s all I’ve got, and I can get over that.”

Her eyes softened, her lips began to curl up into a faint smile, and did he just see her pupils dilate or was he losing his mind?

“I can get over that, because, Rumple, I - ”

No. No. Quickly.

“I lied,” he spat, throwing the words into the room like stones at a greenhouse. Her loving look fell away from her face to leave her looking scared and confused, and God, he felt sick. He felt so very sick, and so very sad, and this was like pulling teeth, but worse. So much worse.

“W-what? What… What do you mean?” she stammered, her brow deeply furrowed. She took a stumbling step back.

“I broke my promise.”

“But you said - ”

“I know what I said. I lied. I tried to leave this world, and I couldn’t. That’s the only reason I’m still here. If I’d gotten my way, you’d be alone right now.”

“You…”

The quiver of her lip, the shimmer of tears in her eyes, her shoulders hunching inward as if she were getting ready to crawl into a little ball and hide away - it made him want to hold her and whisper apologies and sweet things in her ear, but he had to rip off this bandaid and he had to do it now.

“I’m a liar, and a coward. You shouldn’t want me here. You shouldn’t want to be with me. Tell me to go.”

On the list of things he could never forgive himself for, which was fairly long, making Belle cry was high up, scrawled in angry red letters, underlined and circled for good measure. She was staring down at her feet, hiding her tear-streaked cheeks with her hair falling forward, but he knew. He knew what he’d done.

“But it… it didn’t work?” she mumbled, peeking up from where she’d been staring at her sock-clad feet to freeze him in place with a look he hadn’t expected. “You couldn’t go?”

“Well, no. Obviously. Obviously I couldn’t, or I’d… uh…”

He trailed off when he realized she was smiling.

“You should be angry,” he managed to breathe under the weight of her curious stare.

“Oh, I am. I’m bloody pissed off, is what I am. And you should go back up to the attic right now,” she said. She was completely calm and completely terrifying, even if she did still let escape a sniffle on occasion. “And when you’re done thinking running away is the solution, drop by. I’ll wait.”

She looked away and nodded, shuffling towards her coffee machine. “Yeah,” she murmured to herself, fishing out a coffee pad from the bag, “I can wait.”

He retreated with his tail between his legs like the dog he was.

…

“Rumple.”

It was dark and late. Past three in the morning, if she had to guess. Belle couldn’t sleep. She’d been staring up at the ceiling in complete darkness when she felt him, so she kicked the sheets away, got up from the bed and saw him standing by the door. Just barely there. Staring up. She couldn’t really see his eyes from here - not when he was so faint. He knew she could feel him, then. That’s why he was visible.

“Let me go, Belle.”

He sounded tired. He’d never looked so much a ghost as he did then. She didn’t say a word, but on her bare feet, in her pajamas, Belle made her way down. It had been a while since she saw his handsome face, and she wanted to see it up close. How many days had it been since he’d tried to make her push him away? Two? Three? Not a week, surely?

“Tell me you never want to see me again.”

God, what a cliché. Eight steps almost closed the distance between them. Not enough for them to touch, but close enough to plaster her body against his should the urge arrive.

“No.”

His eyes were fixed to her lips in a dark stare. Belle slid her hands slowly up his arms. He didn’t move away. He let her touch him. He’d never once turned to air for her fingers to sweep through since they got closer, and that tonight was no different held profound meaning. At least, that’s what it felt like.

“I don’t exist.”

“‘Course you do.”

Her hands were on his shoulders and she caught his lips softly, on her tiptoes. He didn’t kiss back. Not really. There was a soft twitch of his upper lip, but it might very well have been subconscious.

“I’m no-one,” he spoke against her lips.

“Rumple…”

“That’s not my name. You as good as made me up.”

Oh, his mouth was still going strong and whispering pinpricks to her heart, but Belle’s heart was stronger. She knew there was very little fight left in him. He was a cornered wolf on the run, hounded down and exhausted, baring his fangs in a last ditch attempt to get away. His hand trailed from her ribs down to her hip, and the other one joined soon after. Belle felt those sparks she always felt whenever he touched her with intent, and it was reassuring but not surprising to see that his touch could still flick that switch of hers with very little warning. When she kissed him again, his lips moved. A brief return of pressure, a soft sound, his hands heavy on her hips.

“You need to grow out of me.”

What? Like he was some imaginary friend?

“No.”

He kept breaking their kisses to say something she didn’t want to hear, and her mouth kept swallowing it all up. But it didn’t matter; she would just kiss him until he realized there was no point in staying away. Kiss his fears right from his lips, drink them down and maybe keep them in her own chest for a while. Give him a break that way, because talking certainly hadn’t helped. They’d tried talking it over, and he got scared, dropped that bomb and fled. But here, right now, she wasn’t talking much and he wasn’t running, and maybe this would do the trick. Maybe now, he’d stay.

“Belle, we’re a train wreck. Please.”

“No.”

His voice was deep, low and gruff, and she heard exhaustion and desperation and lust in it, and she couldn’t possibly let him go now that he was so close to caving. She gently took his bottom lip between her teeth and slid her hands up his chest, and down again to his thighs. The sound he made was encouraging, and she let go of his lip to lick at it, smoothing over wounds she hadn’t made. Couldn’t make.

“If we’re a train wreck, why are you kissing me?”

“I’m weak and selfish,” he murmured.

He was the one to kiss her, now, and if her head hadn’t been swimming in a strange, heady mixture of sadness, anger and lust, Belle might have been a little bit smug about it, too. His tongue was bold, so she made hers bolder and in her kiss tried to tell him how they belonged together, how she needed him and he needed her, how they were inextricably connected now and they were fools to think death could stand in their way. When he broke away, it was with a frustrated groan and a tightening of his grip on the fabric at her waist.

“I broke my promise.”

“I forgive you.”

Whether it was frustrated, or angry, or desperate didn’t matter; the growling sound he made when she said _forgive_ went straight down between her legs and stole the breath right out of her lungs. He must have known that she needed him to devour her, somehow, for his hands to come pulling at the hem of her t-shirt like that, tugging it up, knowing fully well that she’d lift her arms and help. He spun them around and she was pressed up against the wall, her body followed by his. She shoved down her bottoms and panties, kicked them off, and let him bite, lick, touch every bit of exposed skin he wanted while she sank her fingers into his hair.

“Why won’t you tell me to go?” he murmured against her neck in between little desperate bites.

“You’re not the only selfish one.”

His fingers in between her legs were building up white hot heat and making it difficult for her to breathe, let alone speak, so her voice came out whispered and strained when she pulled him closer by a handful of hair so he could hear when she murmured, “So maybe neither of us deserves to get out of this train wreck.”

She’d never been fucked up against a wall before, but she decided then and there that it was perfect, in that moment, to have him hold her up, drive himself into her, make that much of a physical effort to get to her, to have her and be with her - as close as he could. Who was he trying to kid, here? They were perfect, and this was perfect. He was hot all around and inside of her, and he held onto her like a drowning man to driftwood. He found a certain angle and tripped up her brain with just a twitch of his hips. Her mouth tried to form words but her voice refused to sound. It was fast and shallow, until he lifted her up and away from the wall, and she ended up on her back, on her sofa, with his head right next to hers and her hands clawing uselessly at his back. Like this, he went slow, deep. Held still and stayed there. Glowed in this darkness. Warm and soft.

“Please, tell me to go,” he whispered, but she writhed underneath him, telling him wordlessly to bloody move already, and he moved faster, frantic, breathing soft sounds in her ear.

“Stay,” she said.

He finished hard, deep, made her bite her cheek so as not to cry out as she brought herself off and he fell on top of her, the way she liked him to. She had one arm tight around his neck, the other still in between their bodies, almost crushed. Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all while she had him here again. She wanted to see his face, but he wasn’t looking up. His hair was still soft against her cheek, his chin tucked into that place where her shoulder met her neck, his glow slowly fading.

Her hand found his cheek and she guided his face up. His eyes were closed, his brow deeply creased. In hindsight, Belle should have known she might as well have kept her mouth shut, but what she said, rather stupidly, was an excruciatingly naive and extremely ill-timed, “Scrabble?”

When he cracked his eyes open, Belle read guilt in them, and her heart froze and fell straight down into her stomach with a sickening _thud_ that only she could hear. It was visceral, simple, painful. This hadn’t changed anything for him, and he was still terrified. This was just a moment of weakness. A crack in his resolve. He moved up and away from her, gone in a flash and back again, but dressed. He swallowed, looked down, buried his fingers in his hair and backed slowly towards the door.

“You’re going to fuck me and go.”

He cringed at the harshness of her words, as if that wasn’t exactly what he was doing, here. Sprawled out on her sofa, naked and sweating and damn near crying, Belle felt her heart speed up and her blood rush faster, hotter. God, not this anger again. She rushed to cover herself with the throw blanket on the sofa, wrapping it around herself like a towel. She felt like an idiot, but there was no way she was going to have this argument naked. Not while he was dressed, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry. I should have stopped you. Stopped myself, I mean.”

“You unbelievable bloody -” she cried, choking back the last word. She was angry, not mean. “That wasn’t the mistake! Leaving me right now is!”

“Belle, I… I didn’t come here for that. I promise you I didn’t. I wanted to convince you that we couldn’t… but then you… you looked…”

He sighed and shook his head, his eyes clenched shut as if a monstrous headache just hit him square between the eyes. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence, because Belle knew exactly what he meant. She knew this was going to happen. She knew they couldn’t stay away, that they’d keep colliding like this. The pull was too strong, the love too big, the sex too good, and they were too weak to resist.

“It’s still messed up, Rumple,” she said. “Leaving like this right now.”

His dark eyes were fading fast, and the pressure behind her own told her she hadn’t quite run out of tears just yet. God, she was tired. Tired of crying for him when they could be wrapped in each other’s arms right now, sleeping peacefully in her bed.

“I’m still not letting you go,” she said through clenched teeth.

“I’m sorry.”

So was she.

“Yeah.”

And she still loved him.

…

Belle got blind drunk a few days after, passed out on the sofa and woke up in her bed the morning after, making her suspect they’d found an answer for question number eleven on her list, because there was no way she got up there herself. He must have picked her up and floated her up there. How had he known she was off her face? Had her music been too loud? That was probably it, because she hadn’t felt him in the room when she was still… well, conscious.

There was a glass of water next to the bed and a choir of her own voice screaming self-reproach in her head, which was pounding like crazy, incidentally. Her mouth was felt. Her tongue just plain unpleasant. She poured the water down her throat, but it didn’t help much. When she stood up, she was a little unbalanced, so she just dropped back down onto her bed again and blindly reached into her night stand, hoping there was some ibuprofen in there. There was.

It wasn’t a turning point so much as a dead end at the end of a precipice, and Belle decided to turn back instead of go down that path. (Well, fall down it, to be accurate.) One cathartic wine binge, but never again. Not even if she really, really, really didn’t want to think about the man in the attic who loved her but didn’t want to.

She had two more hours of fitful sleep while the building around her woke and came alive, and then Belle dragged herself down to her kitchen for coffee and pop tarts. Spilling crumbs all over her lap as she ate at her computer, she decided that there were far too many business e-mails to respond to. They’d have to wait until she felt less godawful and had more in her than a bunch of one word replies - no punctuation.

But there was something else. A message from Sam. He’d sent her those pictures he’d promised. God, but why now? Belle briefly considered closing her e-mail altogether and waiting for Rumple to drop by again to prove just how much they couldn’t be together by _being_ with her, but she was too curious. A few clicks, bated breath, her heart beating just a little bit faster, and there he was.

Undeniably him. From flesh and bone to paper and ink to pixels on her screen. A warm, mortal body in grey scale, decades away from her. Rumple - no, Samuel, with his suspenders on and his sleeves rolled up, elbow deep in a machine of some sort, his brow creased deeply. Concentration? Frustration? People passing in the background were blurred, and so were his arms, just a little bit. He hadn’t been posing, then. He’d actually been working.

The boy who wanted to make dresses had grown up to tame a towering machine of steel. No silk for his skillful fingers to cut and sew into beautiful things, no. Just cogs and screws for him. He looked just about the same as he did now, but his hair was shorter. Still fairly longish, but it had clearly been cut, and he’d slicked it back. She much preferred him with his soft locks framing his face, but he was still handsome. Of course he was.

Little Neal must have taken the next picture, because she recognized the background. They were on the ship that brought them to this country, and he was leaning back against the railing with a hint of a smile on his face. He was younger in this one. Much younger. Happier, too. His hair was blown to the side by the strong ocean winds, and he was holding down his bowler hat with one hand, presumably to keep it from flying right back to Scotland without him.

The third scan was not what she’d expected. It wasn’t a different picture; it was the back of the other one, and right in the middle of it was written in great big cheery letters, _Da._

And that’s when her heart broke. Not very dramatically, mind. Not right down the middle in two. It was just a little crack to trigger a strange, unexpected little sob; soft and tearless, getting stuck in her throat on its way out. Belle swallowed, but that didn’t get rid of it. She didn’t even know why this was so painful, but it was.

She was still keeping Rumple’s tin box safe in her desk drawer, and in that box was that toy car and that envelope, and in that envelope was the picture that had brought back the memory of his son. And that picture had been in Rumple’s possession for all these years, whether he knew about it or not, just as Neal had kept the other. They’d written each other’s names on the back and kept them their entire lives. And beyond, even. Was that not the most precious thing in the world?

_Da._

She risked a few speeding tickets to come bursting through the door to her father’s flower shop and throw herself into his arms in front of a baffled customer who quickly took his bouquet of roses and fled - hopefully having paid for them.

“Belle! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“No, dad,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around him as tight as she could. “No, I’m not hurt, I just… Can you hold me? Please?”

She felt safe and loved in his arms, but no less sad. That odd hollow and heavy feeling was making her cry again, and she wished she could just spill her guts and tell him that she was in love with a bloody ghost, but she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t. He still had a handful of peach colored chrysanthemums in his hand, and the petals were tickling her ear.

She wanted to ask him if love was supposed to feel like that. If it was supposed to hurt so bad. Her poor dad, clueless but holding on to her shaking body as she sobbed in his arms and soaked his shirt with her tears. He held her, rocked her gently even though she shook almost violently, cooed and tried to soothe her when his instinct was to protect her from physical harm. But he couldn’t protect her when the damage had already been done, could he?

He couldn’t fix this even if she could explain. He couldn’t travel back in time, save her love from the bullet that stopped his heart and bring him to her here in this moment so they could fall in love all over again. He would if he could, but he couldn’t, so Belle cried every single tear she had out on his shoulder so that when her body had stopped convulsing in sobs and she was sniffling and wiping away the tears, she could finally answer her father’s question and murmur, “I’m in love with someone and we’re not sure if we can be together.”

“Someone new?”

Well, it sure as hell wasn’t Gaston. Belle nodded and took a tissue from the box her father had gotten from behind the counter and held out to her with a slightly shaky hand. He’d always been a bit nervous whenever she was upset. He’d always worry that he’d make things worse, somehow. That he could never be as good as comforting her as her mother used to be.

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a good man, dad.”

“You do realize that it’s my duty as a father to kill anyone who makes my little girl cry like that, yeah?”

Belle nodded and giggled through her last remaining tears. Yeah, good luck with that, dad, she thought. Her father had been overprotective in the past, and there were a few occasions where an unfair teacher found himself pinned to a wall and stared down, or a playground bully was yelled right into his mother’s arms - and Belle still wasn’t quite sure he hadn’t played a part in Gaston’s sudden and welcome radio silence - but on the whole, he’d let his softer side come to the surface the past few years. He wouldn’t harm a fly, really. Not that he even could if the fly was already dead.

He guided her to the back room, sat her down on an iron wrought garden bench he hadn’t been able to sell and, after she turned down his offer to make them a cup of tea, asked her, “What’s this about not knowing if you can be together, doll?”

She wasn’t going to lie. She was just going to be creatively vague.

“He, uh… He has a different lifestyle. I mean, we couldn’t do many couple-y things. Cause he’s very busy, and if my writing takes off, I would be too, and we couldn’t have a normal relationship. Couldn’t go out often or at all, I mean. And…”

And, yeah. Lie a bit. Sure. She may have been a terrible liar, but her father was a terrible sap and believed her every word. Maybe if she dropped a little nugget of truth in there, she’d feel less bad.

“And sometimes he’s not okay with the age difference,” she muttered with a cough.

“How much older is he?” came her father’s sudden, deep-voiced inquiry. Belle rolled her eyes. Should have known that would ruffle that old bird’s feathers.

“Old enough that it’d be awkward to bring him round for dinner, dad, but it’s not a problem.”

“You just said it was.”

“No, I said he thinks it is, but it’s not.”

“So he knows he needs to find someone his own age.”

“Dad! I’m serious!” she cried, clutching at his arm in some childish attempt to get him to feel what she felt. “I love him, you know, and he loves me. He’s just clinging to the age thing cause he thinks I’d be better off without him. It’s an excuse. He feels guilty cause he keeps imagining things not working out, but we haven’t even really properly tried, yet.”

The age thing was, of course, the death thing. It was strange how talking about this without actually talking about it made things so much more clear in her head.

“You really love him?” he sighed, looking more vulnerable than she’d seen him in a long time.

“Yeah.”

He sighed again and studied her face, but Belle knew what he read there, and she wasn’t worried. How could he possibly look at her smile through her tears like that and doubt the fact that she was in love?

“I don’t know, doll. He sounds like an idiot and I don’t approve, but maybe he has a point.”

“What… what do you mean?” asked Belle, feeling her stomach flip. It’s not as if she expected her father to start planning the wedding, but perhaps she’d expected him to be a little more supportive. Not discouraging, at least.

“I’m not even gonna bother asking you for details, cause you’re my little chatterbox, Belle, and if you were going to tell me all about him, you would have done that already. But…”

He leaned back in his seat, wiping his tired, rugged face with his hands.

“Love grows in time,” he mumbled. “The longer you wait, the more it’s going to hurt to lose it. And if your future together is so uncertain, well…”

Mom. He was thinking of her. Belle could see by the look in his eyes, distant as if he were looking straight back in time, right at her beautiful face. Belle bit her lip and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, even though he was saying things she didn’t want to hear and making her doubt her own judgement. All she knew was that she was through crying. She was tired of waking up in a sea of tissues, tired of ruined mascara and stress headaches.

“How about that tea, love?” he asked her, patting her clumsily on the back.

“Sure.”

They sat and talked about business and her writing, because she didn’t want to hear what else he had to say about Rumple, and all the while she felt a strong pull back home, a rope tied around her waist, tugging her back to the attic so she could… God, whatever. Convince him? Have him convince her? She didn’t wait for her tea to get cold. Instead she risked minor internal burns and told her father not to worry, she’d call if she needed to talk, and she felt better already. Which wasn’t really true, but he didn’t need to know that, did he?

She didn’t break the speed limit, this time.

…

“Belle.”

She’d been a fool to think she could climb up there, see his handsome face and not want to kiss it. She crashed into him, her hands gripping the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, pushing herself against him, and finally her lips felt his again and she was home. The sick feeling of doubt in the pit of her stomach evaporated and was replaced with that familiar heat, that burning love, that certain knowledge that this was right. This was _right_.

“Belle, I still don’t -”

“I know,” she breathed, her hands cradling his face, “and I’ll leave right after. I just need this right now. Please.”

God, her chest was heaving, her heart pounding. She felt as if her blood raced fast and hot and she was dizzy, almost, but not quite. Lightheaded. In love. She was still holding his face so she could make sure she spotted every little twitch of his face, every subtle hint of emotion, every sign that he loved her as much as she did him. Oh, and it was obvious. He was an open book with size sixteen font, ‘I love you’ bolded, in italics and underlined in the middle of his sea of doubting, hesitant words.

His gorgeous dark eyes stared straight into hers, his brow creased deep in worry, but Belle could never have missed his little nod, so she let go and fell into him, hard. She pulled him along until she was backed against his desk, and she heard him sweep a bunch of things to the floor, but it didn’t matter. He bunched her skirt up, lifted her onto the desk, mapped every bit of her mouth he could reach with his tongue, pushed the fabric of her panties out of the way and wound her up with his fingers even though she was ready for him and had been since she saw his face in the tired old lamplight flickering up above.

When he pushed inside, his hands went flying all over her body; her back, her hair, her waist, her thighs, and he wasn’t fucking her hard enough to make her forget. He wasn’t cold enough, not selfish enough to make her want to let go, and he was set on making her come twice before he even so much as made a sound. He knew exactly where the desk pushed into her flesh painfully and slid his hands in between to save her the bruises, even though she wouldn’t have minded the memento. His lips were on that spot below her ear that always wrecked her composure and she had to bite into his shoulder to muffle her cries when she came so hard she damn near forgot where she was. The light bulb flickered and then died. Of course it did. There was still light coming from the desk lamp she’d gotten him, and from his heaving body, too.

And there was silence, apart from her own shallow breaths as she willed her heart to stop racing. She closed her eyes to better relish the softness of his hair sliding against her cheek as he pulled back and stepped away from the desk where she lay ravished and exhausted, sated and yet empty, propped up by her tired arms. His eyes roved over his handiwork for all of two seconds before he disappeared and came back dressed and looking just as melancholy and guilty as he had when he fucked her and left that other night.

“Belle, you know I don’t want you to go, but…”

“I know,” she said, nodding as she slid off the desk with a stifled groan and smoothed her skirt back down. She knew.

Next to the desk lay the papers Rumple had swept to the floor. Belle bent down to pick them up and saw her own face staring back at her. He’d drawn her in light pencil strokes as if she had been right there with him while he was drawing it. Was that really what she looked like? How he saw her?

“Beautiful,” Belle murmured, handing him the papers once she’d piled them neatly together. He’d been standing there with his arm out and his hand shaking a bit, obviously a bit uncomfortable with her staring at his drawings like that. She didn’t know why - they really were great - but she could tell he was.

“Yeah,” he replied. “You are.”

Her laughter came sudden, unexpected, and louder than was strictly a good idea, and she cried, “Oh God, that was so corny!”

It was so nice to hear his laughter again, deep and contained but genuine. He had his shy smile on and shrugged as he slid the papers into a desk drawer. She wanted to kiss him again. Ask him to come down with her and forget about the mess they’d made of this precious thing they had.

“What are we doing, Rumple?” she sighed once her laughter had died out and cold, harsh reality imposed itself again.

“Cutting back,” he muttered. “Weaning.”

She wasn’t sure if she agreed with the phrasing, there.

“So your plan really is to sit up here and pretend I don’t exist?”

“I don’t suppose you have any plans to move out?” he asked with a forced playful lilt to his voice and a lopsided smile.

“No such plans.”

“Then yes. I’m going to sit up here until I forget about you, or until you tell me to fuck off so I can leave.”

Her occasional foul mouth was rubbing off on him. Or perhaps he’d decided to start using those words outside of the context he was most comfortable using them in. Belle smiled, shook her head and watched him let down the ladder for her.

“Good luck with that.”

“Thank you,” he said with a polite little bow. Belle smirked.

“Would you like me to bring by a new light bulb?”

“No need. I’ve got a stash. If I’d known why I’d be needing them...”

For all their jokes and smiles and playful ribbing, Belle felt sad. She felt sad as she climbed down the ladder and didn’t see his face when he pulled it back up because he’d gone invisible already. She was sad as she walked back into her apartment alone. She was sad when dinner was frozen pizza and not something home cooked and delicious, or frozen pizza with a side of Rumple’s disapproving tuts and half-hearted judgements, at least.

And she was sad because they were getting to her. ‘They’ being Rumple, and now her father too, with their lack of a sense of adventure. With their worries and fears, and their insistence that they cut their losses and gave up before the game had even really started. It was starting to make sense to be afraid, to minimize the damage and avoid the deeper cuts, and that wasn’t like her. That wasn’t like her at all. Ruby knew that. What was up with the men in her life, she asked herself as she threw herself on her sofa with the sigh to end all sighs.

When her phone rang, Belle had half a mind to ignore it and go back to staring at the ceiling in her state of indefiniteness and fear, but when she’d blindly reached for her phone buzzing loudly on the coffee table and saw that it was her father, she decided she might as well pick up and let him try to sway her one way or the other. Just anything. Anything that wasn’t this strange, sticky paralysis, before she lost another night of sleep.

“Hey, dad.”

“Hi, doll. How are you feeling?”

“Alright,” she lied.

“Is your fella there with you?”

“Nah. Why, d’you wanna call him an idiot? I can deliver that message.”

“Belle, I’m serious,” he warned, a hint of laughter in his tired voice. “After you left, I… I did some thinking.”

“Yeah?”

“About your mother and I. How much I loved her. She gave me the most precious thing in the world, and I…”

Belle sat up straight and felt the tears she said she wouldn’t cry well up. His voice was cracking, that’s why. He was trying to keep strong for her, but she could hear his pain from miles away.

“Dad, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about this.”

“Just let me talk, Belle. Like I said, I loved her. I still do. When she died, I was angry, and I know you know that. I was angry because she came into my life, made everything a million times better and more beautiful, and when she got taken away from us…”

Screeching tires, a hellishly loud bang and smoke. Belle swallowed.

“Dad?”

“I’m still here, love. I’m alright. I meant to say I thought she’d taken all of that beauty with her when she passed. But that’s not true.”

“You’re saying I should appreciate the memories we made and let him go,” she mused quietly, feeling her heart sink down to her stomach. Maybe she should. Maybe that was the only way. If he didn’t want to give this love of theirs a try, then who was she to make him?

“You know, your mother never let me finish talking, either.”

“Sorry, dad,” she said, sniffling away a tear and stifling a giggle. She used to hate it when her dad got her to stop crying by making her laugh. Now, she didn’t mind so much. “Go on.”

“If I had the chance to do it all over again, Belle, if I could go back in time, knowing exactly what would happen and how much it would hurt, I would still let her stop me and ask me for the time. I would still ask her number. I’d still fall in love with her and marry her. Even if we hadn’t had you, I would have done it all over again. Even if I knew the exact date and time that car would come out of nowhere and - ”

He fell silent, but she heard the phone rustle against what sounded like fabric. He’d move it away from his mouth to keep her from hearing him crack. She wished he didn’t think he needed to do that with her. There was a lump in her throat and tears clouding her vision, but she didn’t feel the need to let it take control of her body anymore. No crying, she’d told herself. No more crying.

“If you love him,” he sighed after a few more seconds of silence, “and if he loves you, and he’s not a complete arsehole…”

“Not a _complete_ one…”

“Do you love each other?”

“We do.”

“Then… it’s a journey. Think of it like that. And if there’s a chance you can make that journey beautiful, you shouldn’t cut it short. Beauty’s all there is in this life, in the end. That’s what your mother taught me.”

She couldn’t move a muscle. Her mouth had dropped open and her eyes were wide, and she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Was her heart even beating anymore?

“And I should have told you that back in the shop, love. I shouldn’t have been on that moron’s side. But you know how I get when you cry. I only wanted what’s hurting you to stop, but love isn’t hurting you. Turning away from it is.”

Something inside of her sparked. Like a match struck fizzles and crackles and flares up, Belle felt something bright deep inside her belly, right next to where she kept her love for Rumple.

It was hope.

“So talk some sense into him, and tell him I’ll come break his nose if he doesn’t stop acting like such a pussy.”

“Dad!” she laughed. Maybe she could let herself cry, now that they weren’t tears of sadness anymore.

“Thank you, dad.”

“Was that helpful?”

“It was. Thank you.”

“Alright. I’m glad. Call me if you want to talk, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too, dad. Thank you.”

“That’s three times you’ve thanked me. I’m gonna hang up before you really get going.”

“Alright, alright” she giggled. “Bye.”

Belle was energized, now. Giddy. _Happy_. Of course love wasn’t hurting her, and of course love was a journey, and who the hell cared about the destination when the scenery could be so breathtakingly beautiful it would last them a lifetime? There was no reason to fear whatever hypothetical pain waited for them at the end of their story; they weren’t nearly there yet.

Now she just had to convince Rumple of that. Belle had never been the best talker (quantity over quality, in her case) so she sat down at her desk, closed her laptop, pushed it out of the way, took a few pieces of paper and her favorite pen and did what she did best. She began to write.

_Rumple,_

And she poured out her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	18. Of All the People, We Could Be Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle pours her heart out onto lined paper and by some miracle manages to fit it all in an envelope. There's some manner of ending. Or beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I'm stealing chapter titles from songs again! This time, I sneaked a line out of [Blue Blood by Foals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQDymiZeDGI). Again, it's not important.
> 
> We're nearing the end, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting a bit emotional. Thank you for being kind and patient, as always.

Only a few hours after they’d last made a terrible mess of things, round about midnight, Belle showed up again. Like a midnight haunting, funnily enough.

“Rumple. It’s me.”

“Who else would it be?” he muttered under his breath.

This definitely wouldn’t work if she kept seeking him out. For him to start missing her less, he had to start missing her more - and soon. But not tonight. Not yet. He hadn’t the heart to tell her to go back to her apartment and leave him to stew in his collection of terrible decisions. When he opened the hatch at her softly spoken request and saw her standing there, wordlessly holding up an envelope and smiling a curious little smile, he wasn’t sure what to think. Did she not want to come up? God, some self-destructive part of him wished she did. She oughtn’t - _they_ oughtn’t.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Read it and find out.”

“A letter?”

“Couldn’t find your e-mail address,” she deadpanned with a shrug.

He snorted but floated halfway down so he could take the light brown envelope from between her fingers. When it slid away from her grip, her eyes widened to watch the thing float up and disappear into the attic. Still not used to that, was she? Good. He sighed and sat down with his legs crossed so he could look down at her over the edge of the hatch. She was still standing there, looking around a little awkwardly, knowing fully well he wasn’t going to make himself visible for her.

“Haven’t gotten a letter in a long time,” he murmured.

“That’s why I stuck it in an envelope. Reckoned it’d be nice. Who doesn’t like getting proper mail?”

He looked at the back of the envelope and saw her carefree, simple cursive. Not Samuel. Not Mr. Gold. Just Rumple.

“Do you want me to read it right now?”

“Not with me here. But tonight, yeah. Unless you’ve got something else on.”

He could lob that ball back with another useless joke about his non-existent busy social life, but their hollow words were beginning to feel forced and unpleasant, and he would rather let the silence wrap around them instead.

“Alright.”

“Alright,” she replied, nodding and shuffling off in her slippers.

The hatch creaked shut and he was alone again. He still hadn’t replaced the broken lightbulb, but Belle’s desk lamp was more than enough for him. All he did anymore was sit, read and sketch. In fact, he thought he might very well sit right there at his desk for the rest of his strange existence. At his desk, in the bright spotlight of her gift of light, he opened the envelope. A last goodbye, perhaps? The electricity bill? A strongly worded, well deserved reprimand? He took out a neatly folded piece of lined paper, unfolded it, and saw that it was, in fact, a letter. Two pages, because her handwriting was as bold as she was, but took up rather a lot more room.

And he began to read.

 

_Rumple,_

_I’m writing you because sometimes writing comes easier to me than speaking. I think it might be easier for you to read than to listen, too. I’m not very good at introductory paragraphs, so I’m going to push us right into the deep end of the pool, now. Sorry about that._

_I want to be with you, and I know you want to be with me. The good thing about letters is that I can write that sentence right there and you can’t interrupt to tell me that you only want me to be happy. Haven’t you ever wanted two things at the same time before? Sometimes, I’ll grant you, those two things can be contradictory - like how I want to eat all of the Halloween candy but I also want to help give a bunch of kids in cute costumes the sugar rush of their lives. I can’t have both, so I picked one, and I didn’t eat the candy. (Not all of it. For now.) Our situation is even more simple than my candy dilemma, I promise. You want to be with me. You want me to be happy. Your mistake was to take that deadly little word ‘but’ and stick it in between those two completely compatible sentences. They’re not contradictions, Rumple, and you should know that you can have both. You’ve had both already, but you were too busy thinking up terrible scenarios to notice._

_You think bad things will happen if you stay with me. You’ve been trying to tell me that ever since we met, and I heard you. I understand that’s what you think. But I want to tell you that good and bad things will happen whether we’re together or not, and all I know is that I want you here with me for both. Remember what we talked about that night? That it’s important to use those good things in life to make even better things happen? Well, you’re my good thing, Rumple. You could be my better thing, too, and that’s why I won’t give up on you. Just imagining coming home to find you gone that day hurts. Like a brick in my stomach, like a blow to the throat, and I can’t quite breathe if I think about it for too long. That’s why I’m glad you’re stuck. I’m glad I haven’t lost you yet. I’m glad there’s still hope. I’m so happy you happened to me._

_What we have is so precious, so unique, that there aren’t any guidelines to turn to. No-one knows the rules to this game and we’re playing it on our own, but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out. Because we’re writing our own story, you and I, and it could be a great one. If you would stop worrying about the destination for just one minute and picture the journey, wouldn’t you agree that we could build something beautiful here? I don’t know what our ending will look like, but I do know that this isn’t it. We haven’t even written our story yet. We haven’t even really started._

_And so what if it all ends in tears, fifty years from now? Don’t you think we could be worth it? I do. You shouldn’t miss out on a wonderful story just because you’ve convinced yourself that it couldn’t possibly have a happy ending. I understand that you’ve been worried about hurting me and hurting yourself in the future, but you can stop thinking about that, now. There’s no use in bracing for pain that may or may not come. It wouldn’t hurt any less. We might as well carry on, take it day by day, and be happy together. We can do that, you know. It’s not a fairy tale. It’s not a lie. It’s real, and its ours for the taking._

_But I know that even if these words I’ve written mean anything to you, they still won’t take away all of your fears. It’s alright, because I know you a little bit by know. I’ve seen first hand what you can do when you set your mind to it and when you let me help. You’re brave, even if you don’t think so yourself, and fear doesn’t negate that. Is bravery really bravery if there’s no fear to overcome?_

_You were brave when you went outside these brick walls with me. You were brave when we opened that box together. You were brave when you relived your own death. You were brave when you let me drag you into my bed, lover. So please. Please be brave with me now. I promise you it will be worth it._

_Come down so I can tell you something you already know. I’m waiting for you._

_Belle_

 

She was right; he was still terrified. Her letter had left him standing at the top of a cliff with the wind whipping around his ears, staring down, dreading the fall, hoping with all of his broken heart her words were true - because had she not just told him they had wings? He left her words on his desk right next to his sketches of her and followed the thrumming snare that connected them, right into her apartment. Maybe they’d fall. Maybe they’d soar. They’d find out, because she was right. She was worth it. He was done running.

His Belle was standing by the window with her arms wrapped around her, staring out into the darkness - or perhaps at the raindrops tapping gently against the glass - and then at him. Or, her reflection was, at least. Their reflections shared a moment that lasted until she nodded faintly and turned around. Look at her. What manner of fool, dead or alive, would run from that?

“You came.”

“Had to. Couldn’t read your handwriting.”

Stupid joke. Stupid, stupid. She shook her head but her smile was golden, and he felt better already. Perhaps not that stupid. “I read your letter,” he said softly, even though he knew fully well she knew. “You wanted to tell me something.”

“I do. But do you want me to?”

He couldn’t blame her for asking. He’d been terrified to hear her say it for a while, but now he needed the push so he could stop staring down the darkness. It didn’t even want him anymore, anyway. Those words from her mouth would drag the last bits of him out of _there_ and into her world, and he would drop all of his useless, heavy things to her living room floor so his weary arms could hold her every night. So yes. He wanted her to. He needed her to.

He couldn’t find his voice, so he nodded.

“I love you,” she said, the corners of her pretty mouth curling faintly up. “I love you, Rumple. Samuel Gold.”

The words were no surprise - like she’d said; he already knew - but still they hit him with a frightening force, and suddenly there was that useless urge to cry again, that feeling as if he were drowning, that his lungs were full of something liquid and heavy, and that everything would be fine if he could just cry and get rid of that strange pressure. It was awful. It was suffocating.

But then she smiled and he breathed deep, somehow. He didn’t know how he could feel so strongly as if he could breathe when he had no lungs, but it didn’t matter. He was alright, now. He wasn’t drowning. Belle stepped nearer, her little nervous habit drawing his eyes to the hem of her blouse where her fingers were worrying the fabric and trembling ever so slightly. When he looked up again, she was much closer, and her eyes were brighter than he’d ever seen them; wide and shimmering in this light, just a little wet.

“And I know that you l- ”

“Don’t say it _for_ me!” he rushed, laughter bubbling up. She giggled and muffled the sound with the back of her hand as her cheeks tinted the slightest bit red.

“Well, you say it, then!”

Belle grinned, then chewed on her lip, then grinned again; bounced on her heels ever so slightly up and down, up and down; wove her fingers together and clasped her hands in front of her, and he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and push her firmly down before she made him even more nervous than he already was. He didn’t. Prompted by her eyebrows shooting up in expectation, his lips moved, but nothing came out for a second or two. And then, finally, with an ease that made a mockery of his reluctance to utter the words before, he softly said, “I love you, Belle,” and pushed the bullet right out of his heart.

She didn’t come crashing into him. Instead she opened her arms, caught his strange, incorporeal self in them and sighed against his chest. Safe. She loved him. He loved her. They were in love, and he had a right to this feeling, and he had no right to take it away from her. They were done crashing. They’d done quite enough of that. On her socked feet, she could tuck her head under his chin the way he liked her to, and he wondered how he could ever have given this up. To think that he’d almost lost this treasure, this wonder. To think he’d almost thrown it all away, and yet there she was, forgiving and soft in his arms despite his best efforts. Despite himself.

“We can do this,” she murmured. “Let’s just give this a proper try. No time limit. That’s what messed us up so bad, Rumple. Waiting for Monday to come, like some vague threat.”

Of course. Of course. He pulled her closer, hugged her tighter, muttered, “I thought it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry for those days we spent together,” she said, tilting her face up a bit so she could nuzzle her nose against his neck. “It was wonderful. I felt more love in those few days than I did in my entire life. And we can do that all of the time, now. We can feel like that all of the time.”

He wasn’t sure who’d started swaying their bodies gently from side to side. It might have been him. It might have been her. Didn’t matter. It was good. Safe. A soothing rhythm, a dance that was easy to follow. Left to right and back again, over and over while she breathed deep and slow and made him look forward to holding her sleeping body close in her bed tonight.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, pressed her head closer to his chest and offered another set of words he thought would be more difficult to get over his lips than they actually were, “I’m sorry for breaking my promise.”

“I know,” she replied, tightening her embrace just a little bit, demonstratively, reassuringly.

“It was such a simple, easy promise. I didn’t promise not to leave; I promised not to leave without talking to you about it, and I couldn’t even manage that.”

“I know. I forgive you. I meant it when I said that. You’ll do better.”

Her hands came sliding up his arms before she broke their embrace, and when he saw her smiling face like a child who’d gotten everything on her Christmas list, it was once again driven home that she was right. It was worth it. Seeing her like that was worth it.

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot of making up to do,” she lilted, announcing the abrupt key change with a peck on his lips. Was it really as easy as that? Was this how it would be from now on? Did her quick kiss ring in the rest of their lives together? Well, her life with his existence, he supposed.

“What did you have in mind?”

“You still haven’t made me pancakes.”

“What? Right now? It’s one in the morning!”

“ _Right_ now.”

“Whatever the lady wants,” he sighed, offering her a little bow to make her giggle, then heading into her kitchen to give her exactly what she wanted. She sat at the island counter and watched him, and he couldn’t quite believe that it had been so easy. Was she his, now, and he hers? What would their days look like from now on? They could watch terrible movies, questionable television, and perhaps finally he could secure a Scrabble victory or two. If she taught him how to use her computer, he could learn a bit more about the world while she was at work. He could cook her dinner when she got home from the library. On her days off, they could have quiet mornings where she would write, and he would read or draw, perhaps illustrate her stories for her if she let him, and they could go to that forest again. He’d like to go back there and kiss her on that fallen tree like she’d wanted him to. At night, every night, he could undress her and make her feel exactly the way she deserved to feel.

But pancakes, first. She cracked househusband jokes while he cracked eggs, and all the time he felt the steady pressure of her eyes in his back, so he allowed himself a childish moment to act as if he _wasn’t_ showing off by flipping a pancake needlessly high up in the air and catching it expertly.

“Showoff,” Belle growled.

Her smile when he presented her with her plate had to have been an exaggeration. No reasonable soul would be that delighted with some hastily, unevenly cooked pancakes. She talked about how good it tasted, how the smell always made her so happy no matter how awful she felt, and he could have sworn for a moment there he caught a whiff of it; sweet, nostalgic and comforting, but no. He couldn’t have. She was good, but she wasn’t that good. Was she?

No, she was. It turned out she definitely was when they lay in her bed and talked in soft, deep voices, surrounded by her fairy lights and all of the sudden he thought of honey, and it took him a moment to realize that it was not some random thought out of nowhere; it was a sweet scent in the air, thicker where her hair lay spread out on her pillow and cascaded off of it temptingly close to his fingers. He wouldn’t ask. He’d go have a look in her bathroom, later; see what kind of shampoo she used. If he told her now, she’d surely go running around finding things for him to smell, excited that she could remind him of a whole bunch of other things. A whole world of scents for her to reintroduce him to, and he didn’t want that, now. He wanted her right here, in this bed, underneath her comforter, sleepy with her belly full of pancakes.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked, mirroring the grin he didn’t know he had plastered all over his face.

_I just found out I like the way you smell._

“Nothing. Just smiling.”

In a while, they would move closer to each other and she would get comfortable in his embrace and get to dreaming. For now, they lay on their sides and watched each other from their respective sides of her bed. Just looking. Smiling. Talking.

“I’ll tell you why I’m smiling then. Yeah?” she chirped.

“Please do.”

“I really like that you couldn’t leave because you love me. Can I be smug about that?”

He grinned and offered a nod.

“Sure you can. You’ve earned that right. But…”

“But what?”

“That’s not all it was, I think.”

“Ohh, that’s right,” she sang. “Your affair with the woman next door. Almost forgot.”

“Stop!” he laughed, reaching out to poke her nose so he could watch it crinkle all cute the way it always did. “What I mean is you expanded my world, I suppose. I’m not split between that deep sleep and the confines of this building anymore. It’s bigger than that. I’m… more here.”

“I think I understand.”

“When we started talking, I felt it happening.”

“Felt what?”

“As if you were pulling me further into this world with you. It was terrifying, at first. Like… I don’t know… dragging a fish out of water.”

“Except you’re not a fish,” she teased, her voice sleepier now, “and you can breathe, here.”

“Exactly,” he replied, returning her little smirk with one of his own. “I’m not a fish.”

She tried to hide her yawn from him by burying her face in her pillow, but there was no fooling him. If he just wrapped his arms around her waist, like so, and pulled her close, like so, and then spoke harmless words into the softness of her honey-scented hair for a few minutes, she would drift right off. He would stay awake tonight. Tonight, he didn’t want to be without her for even a single second. He’d been too close to being without her for an eternity to even consider it.

…

For the first time in days, Belle didn’t wake up in the morning just to hide her head under the covers and hope sleep would give her one more chance to feel nothing for a few hours. Instead, there was Rumple - not visible, but with his arms wrapped around her - and the moment she stirred was the moment he came out again, bumping his nose into her forehead to say good morning, and she started the day off with a smile. There was hushed conversation as if they were the first ones awake at a sleepover, discussions of this dream she’d just had (“And the duck was absolutely massive, but I think in my dream, that was just a standard size duck, you know? Like my brain subconsciously thinks that’s just the ideal size of a duck or something.” “You’re insane.”) and plans for breakfast (“Pancakes.” “Again?” “Yes.”) but not before they were ready to trade in the warmth of their linen nest for the chill of the rest of the world this autumn morning.

“There was something I forgot to write in my letter,” she said, reaching over to cross the small distance between their recently disentangled bodies and gently poking her love in the chest. He made a questioning humming noise, and she continued, “I think we should talk about the things that scare us.”

If ever there was a place to talk about that, their bed was it. Their bed, where they were safe and warm. Rumple sighed and looked away for just a few seconds, prompting Belle to add, “Cause I know you’re still afraid of what might happen. It’s just that I think we could make it less scary by talking about it. I don’t want you to keep those thoughts to yourself. That’s how I almost lost you in the first place.”

He tore his gorgeous dark eyes away from the ceiling, turned to face her again with a sigh and said, “I’m afraid that you won’t be happy with me.” No hesitation whatsoever. Belle blinked, not really having expected him to jump right into it. “I’m afraid someone will come along who’ll be better for you than I ever could be.”

“Don’t I look happy to you?” she managed when the mild shock had worn off.

“But what if someone can make you happier? Or what if they can make you just as happy, but could actually take you out? Marry you? Come pick up your stacks of literary awards with you?”

God, she loved her nervous ghost so much. Belle slid closer and fit his cheek into the palm of her hand, smiling when that seemed to make some of those deeply etched lines of worry disappear from his forehead.

“Your love is special, Rumple,” she said. “And it can’t be quantified, you know. I’m in love with you. All of you. There’s no dividing something this big and mysterious into pros and cons to be compared with those of some random bloke in this town. That’s not how love works.”

He laughed silently, and she couldn’t help but lean in and place a soft, rewarding kiss on his smiling lips. When he broke the kiss, it was to ask her, “What about you?” and she wasn’t sure why that had caught her off guard. He seemed to notice right away that she hadn’t exactly planned on sharing her fears - hadn’t even thought of it, in fact - and he raised a single eyebrow in expectation.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have any fears about this thing of theirs. It was just that, unlike Rumple, she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on them, so now she had to scramble for the words she needed to express them, and that took a while. But he was patient, and he reached over to take her hand in his and rub circles on her palm with his thumb.

“I’m afraid that you’ll be stuck taking care of me when I’m 89,” she confessed. “I know you love me, but I’ll age, and I don’t want to be a burden.”

He stopped rubbing circles on her palm to squeeze her hand tight and bring it up to his lips for a kiss. With his lips brushing against her knuckles, he said, “I would wheel you around the park, and you could talk to me as loudly as you want.”

Belle giggled and stole her hand back to ruffle his hair fondly.

“I’m serious!” he continued. “Everyone will think you’ve got a motorized wheelchair, and no-one thinks it’s very odd if an old woman talks to herself.”

“Would you do that?” she asked, scooting closer to give him some very over-the-top puppy eyes.

“Definitely,” he said with a determined nod and a great big grin.

But that grin soon fell from his face like a dried up leaf from a tree, and Belle knew she’d broached a subject too big and scary and unknown for them to really tackle. They could just acknowledge it and try to move on. Put it back where they found it and wait for it to impose itself when the time came.

“It’d be difficult,” he murmured, his voice now deep and vulnerable. “To watch you age, I mean. Not because it’d make me love you any less, Belle, not at all. But age only leads to…”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I’m afraid that if… when you die, I won’t be able to find you. I’ve never once seen another ghost, and…”

It was as if the words were tripping up and catching in his throat, and it hurt to see him this vulnerable and open. But Belle knew that this was better than what he’d been doing all this time. Letting her clean out this wound and stick a new bandaid on was much better than keeping those feelings, those fears, those painful thoughts to himself and letting them grow bigger and darker until they almost took him away from her. Out of her reach.

“And I just hope that if that happens, I’ll be able to disappear again. The thought of having to miss you forever…”

He closed his eyes and trailed off. It looked a little bit as if he was starting to fall asleep mid-sentence, but Belle knew he was still there. Just a bit lost, maybe. She caught a few strands of his soft hair and pulled it away from his face, and said, “I understand.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her in such a way to make her heart glow and grow all at once, so her voice sounded a little weaker than she’d thought it would when she stroked his hair and told him that there were so many good and beautiful things in between now and then, and how glad she was he’d told her. How she wanted him to always tell her. All the while she felt the tension and the gloom melt under her touch and her words, little by little. It was true that they were performing a balancing act, but they were getting better at it. They would be fine.

“Perhaps we should move on to the practical matters, sweetheart.”

“Practical?”

He sat up straight, settled into the pillows and let the sheets pool around his waist. Belle rolled over on her stomach and rested her chin on her folded hands so she could stare up at him, waiting for him to explain.

“What’ll you tell people when they ask you if you’re spoken for?”

Belle smirked because she saw that there was just a hint of preemptive jealousy behind the words. He’d tried to disguise it with a casual tone of voice and a quick smile, but there was intent in his eyes and Belle wasn’t one to miss something like that. Not when they were this close, anyway.

“I’ll tell them the truth,” she replied.

“Not the entire truth, I hope,” he said, quirking an eyebrow.

“A version of it. I mean, I’m not going to pretend I’m not in love. Long distance relationship? Shy, reclusive boyfriend? Something like that. I’ll figure it out. Unless you have any suggestions?”

Finally his stare softened and he shrugged, muttering, “Those might work.”

“You definitely will be referred to as my boyfriend, though. Do you have a problem with that?”

Her ghost boyfriend shook his head with a pleased grin and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

“And when people start to suspect something?”

“Don’t care,” she blurted. “They can think I’m crazy or pathetic all they want.”

“How brave,” he teased.

“Besides, maybe one day you might learn how to look solid. For a little while, at least. I’m not counting on it, don’t worry. I’m just saying. You keep getting stronger, you know.”

For a moment, Belle thought she’d put her foot in her mouth. That now Rumple would think she was holding out hope for some sort of normalcy that she had long since accepted she would never have with him, realized she didn’t even _want_ with him, but he just smiled down at her with a little jump of his shoulders that told her he was simply trying not to mock her optimism.

“You’d trot me out for two minutes so everyone knows there’s an actual boyfriend?”

“Exactly,” replied Belle, grinning as broad as she could.

“I actually wouldn’t be opposed to that,” he mused. “I’d certainly love the chance to stare down potential competition.”

“Rumple!” she laughed, poking his belly to make him squirm down again so they could get back to cuddling. “There’s no competition,” she purred when his arms came wrapping around her.

“Still,” he sighed. “Don’t you go falling for some living boy, now.”

“Don’t you go falling for some ghost lady!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I mean it! A ghost lady who _can_ cook.”

“Yes, well, that’d still be pointless, because I don’t eat.”

“Ghost food. Booberry pancakes.”

“Ohhh, for the love of -” he groaned, throwing up his hands. “Right. That’s it. I’m done! I’m going towards the light!”

“Don’t you dare!” she giggled, holding on tight and rolling them over so that he was covering her body with his. His laughter was deep, and his hair tickled her face, so she slid her fingers through it to pull it back, then reached up to catch his lips. “I’ve been really good keeping terrible puns to myself so far,” she murmured in between kisses. “Surely I’m allowed a few more.”

He was kissing her jawline when he muttered, “I suppose that’s another practical issue. Ghost pun allowance.”

“Mm.”

“I’ll give you one more for this week.”

“But it’s October! It’s nearly Halloween, Rumple!” she whined.

“Alright, alright. Have at it this month.”

“That’s the spirit!”

He groaned again, simply giving up and dropping his head into the pillow, muffling the particularly dramatic sound and making her laugh. She wrapped her arms around him tighter and twisted her head around so she could kiss the only part of his head she could reach - the outer shell of his ear.

“One more practical thing.”

He nodded, sighed and shifted a little bit so he could lay his head on her shoulder. He slipped two fingers between the gaps of the buttons of her pajama top and scratched lightly at the sensitive skin between her breasts. His mind was drifting elsewhere, and Belle’s was rearing to follow, but she just needed to tell him this, because it was important. And then she could let him undo those buttons.

“You don’t have to stay with me all of the time. I mean you can go hang out in your attic whenever you feel like you need to have some alone time.”

“Same goes for you,” he muttered. And would you look at that! He’d managed to sneak one button undone already. Clever, skilled fingers. “Just say the word, darling, and I’ll let you write in peace.”

Another button, and then another one, and then his teeth scraped against her collarbone and his fingers abandoned the task to busy themselves with something else entirely, and she suddenly found it very difficult to get her words out in the right order.

“Means a l-lot,” she breathed. “W-won’t… be taking you up on that any time soon.”

“No?”

How did he know exactly how to touch her to make her stutter and lose her breath within seconds? She hadn’t told him. She hadn’t even shown him. But there he was with his hand between her thighs again, winding her up without breaking eye contact even once. It drove her perfectly, deliciously insane.

“N-Not quite bored… oh God… bored of you just yet.”

He laughed his deep dark laugh close to her ear and she was done for.

…

After she kissed Rumple goodbye that afternoon to go and catch up with Ruby, there was a ridiculous grin on her face and a bounce in her step, because wasn’t everything just going her way all of the sudden? She could leave her boyfriend in her apartment and know that when she got back, there would be a pair of arms waiting for her, and she would have someone to remind her to set her phone’s timer so that the pizza she’d been looking forward to all day wouldn’t burn. She could tell Ruby everything would be fine - she didn’t have to worry anymore, and she could finally be there for her, now.

“So please just tell me about Andy now, Rubes. I’m all ears.”

“Well,” she said, wriggling closer to the edge of her seat and leaning over the table just a little bit. “I think I should hold on to this one. I think you know how that feels, right?”

Belle smirked and nodded, motioning for Ruby to go on.

“Cause he’s very sweet, and funny, and not to mention hot. And he makes me feel like I can do anything.”

“Aw. That’s so important, too.”

“He’s tough, but like, not aggressive, if you know what I mean. Like, if someone started a fight with him, he’d let them get a few hits in to give them a chance to back down, but then he’d kick his ass.”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable,” Belle laughed. “He looks the part, from the picture you showed me. Kind of small but really strong arms.”

“And he doesn’t mind when I wear heels!”

“He’s a keeper, then!”

Ruby sighed and sat back in her seat again, flicking the straw in her empty glass just once to send it spinning around the rim.

“The thing is, his band is starting to get some buzz. They’re touring again soon, and he’s already asked me to come with him.”

“And will you?”

“Probably not,” she sighed with a shrug. “I’ve been backstage with him a lot, and it’s not really my scene. I thought it might be, but it’s not.”

Belle nodded and reached over the table to grab her friend’s hand. “Did you tell him?” she asked. Ruby nodded in response and squeezed her hand appreciatively before letting go to play with her straw again. “What did he say?”

“Oh, you know, something perfect. Cause he’s perfect. He said it’s fine if I don’t want to come with him, and that he’d miss me, but that he’d love to come back home to me, too.”

“That’s really romantic.”

“Right? So I think… I mean, I think this might be the one. And it’s scary. Cause it wouldn’t be easy to miss him so much, but… I don’t think…”

“You can’t picture yourself without him.”

“Yeah. It’s not what I pictured it would be like. Before I met him, I couldn’t imagine falling for someone knowing that it wouldn’t be easy, but… I think this is it, you know?”

Belle smiled. She knew a little bit about tricky boyfriends by now.

“But enough about me. Tell me, how exactly are you and Casper going to fu-”

“Ruby!”

The reprieve was over, and Ruby had honed right in on exactly the thing she’d secretly been wanting to talk about but had been too embarrassed to bring up, which meant that she could only sputter something about how that was a personal matter while her face heated up at a spectacular speed. Ruby gasped and reached over to pry her hands from her face - her stupid attempt to hide the obvious.

“Are you kidding me?” she half-cried, half-whispered. “When? What was it like? How did it feel? Is he good?”

Belle made a whining noise and shook her head, clenching her eyes shut to avoid Ruby’s wolfish grin.

“Belle, come on. I know you never talked about it when you were with Gaston, but you seriously can’t deny me this. Who else am I gonna ask about ghost sex?”

Good thing the dinner crowd was still half an hour away. The diner was practically empty, and the old lady in the back corner booth always switched her hearing aid off when she ate, Ruby assured her, so Belle sat up straight in her seat, took a moment to gather her thoughts, and whispered, “He’s amazing. That’s all you’re getting.”

“Oh my God. Belle, seriously, that’s not enough. I’m gonna need some details, here.”

“I didn’t ask you for details of… whatever it is you do or don’t do with drummer boy!”

“Drummer boy isn’t a ghost!”

“Fine, alright, okay,” Belle muttered. “Ask whatever.”

“So his clothes come off?”

Belle laughed and nodded. “Mhm. I was curious about that, too. They do, but I guess they’re not really clothes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kind of like they’re an extension of him. He makes them up. So I can’t take them off for him, unfortunately. He just makes them disappear.”

Ruby hummed in agreement and said, “That is unfortunate. Getting a guy out of a proper shirt is pretty sexy.”

Belle nodded, but found her mind drifting. If he could think of clothing and make them appear on his body, could he not think of his shirt being unbuttoned while she fiddled uselessly with the buttons? Or would that be too silly? And did Ruby just say something to her?

“Belle?”

“Hm?”

“Damn, were you reliving the moment, girl? I asked whether you had like, full, actual, penetrative sex.”

“Oh!” And there was that blush again. “Oh. Um. Yeah. Ruby, could you stop gasping? This is awkward enough!”

“So he can get hard? How the hell?”

“I kind of had to talk him through it. Cause he thought he couldn’t.”

“Talk him through it? What does that mean?”

“Well, to me it didn’t make any sense that he could see and hear and feel pressure, but pleasure was out of the question, you know? And I knew that he didn’t feel warmth or heat for a while, but now he does, and I figured that it might have had something to do with me. So I told him that, and I just kind of talked about what it felt like to be touched, and I think he… I don’t know. Remembered?”

Ruby whistled and slumped in her seat, her grin and her eyes wide.

“You gave a ghost a boner. That’s a whole new level of hot. Congratulations.”

Belle bit her lip to stifle her giggles and stared down at the table, part of her hoping Ruby was done questioning her, the other part just dying to say something. She was getting tired of blushing and squirming and giggling, but on the other hand, she was just so damn happy.

“He makes me come so easily, Ruby, I don’t get it!”

Welp. Easy to see which part won out, there. Ruby threw her head back and laughed so loud the lady in the corner turned around to give them a strange look, and Belle quickly shifted in her seat so she would be out of view.

“Ruby!” Belle whined, giving her a half-hearted kick under the table.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m sorry,” she cooed, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m just not used to hearing you talk about this stuff.”

“Well, I’m not used to talking about it, but you’re not helping!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. But help me out, here. Several times? And like, not just during foreplay?”

Belle nodded, and Ruby, to her credit, tried very hard not to smirk.

“Well, I mean, first of all, you’re super attracted to the guy, right? That helps.”

“Super attracted,” Belle muttered, nodding seriously.

“And maybe you just have some sort of connection. Like, maybe he just knows what you need. Subconsciously.”

Ruby must have read confusion in her face, because she scooted closer to the edge of her seat again and explained, “Cause you know what you need, right? Maybe your minds are just on exactly the same wave length or something, and that’s how he knows what to do.”

“What, like some sort of psychic connection?” she asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“You sound way too dismissive for someone who’s been banging a _ghost_ ,” scoffed Ruby.

Fair point. And actually, as she gave it some thought, Belle began to wonder if there wasn’t some truth to that theory, because there was also that odd feeling she had just after he left her apartment, like climbing up from a warm swimming pool and into a cool breeze, or opening the freezer on a hot day. The feeling was usually too subtle when they were together, but the lack of it was clear as day.

“I know when he’s in the room,” said Belle, once she’d mulled it over. “Or nearby, I guess. He could be invisible but I’d still know. There’s this feeling I get that I don’t have when he’s not around, and it’s really subtle, but once I noticed it, it was really obvious. I feel it leave with him, if that makes sense.”

“Then my theory doesn’t sound that crazy, right?”

“I guess.”

“A lot more reasonable than a dude from the 1940s who just happens to know how to give a woman multiple orgasms during actual intercourse.”

“Okay, alright!” Belle cried, holding up her hands as if that would stop Ruby in her tracks somehow. “Are you done, now? Curiosity satisfied?”

“Never,” laughed Ruby. “But I’ll pack it in for the day. Thank you for indulging me.”

“I guess you’re welcome,” Belle sighed, rolling her eyes dramatically but quite unable to subdue her grin. This had been fun. Terrifying, but fun. In their comfortable silence, just as she was thinking about heading back home to her boyfriend (she really liked the sound of that) Belle realized there was still the unpleasant matter of canceling the plans they’d made months before.

“Hey,” she said, “I know I’ve been super flakey the past few weeks, and I said we’d spend Halloween together, but - ”

“Babe, don’t even mention it,” said Ruby, waving her hand as if to bat away her apologies. “You’re all loved up, and so am I. Plus, this way I could spend more time with Andy before he leaves town.”

Belle sighed in relief, even though she hadn’t really expected Ruby to be upset at all.

“Besides, I wouldn’t think of getting in the way of you spending Halloween with an actual ghost.”

Belle may not have had many friends, but she sure knew how to keep all the right ones. They said their squealing, hugging, kissing goodbyes, and bravely out into the cold October winds she went. The bounce in her step was even more pronounced as she made her way from the diner back home, her hands deep in her coat pockets and her scarf obscuring her mouth from passers-by who would only think her crazy if they saw her grin at no-one in particular like that.

To come home to a warm apartment with the lights on was something that had never quite warmed her soul when she knew it was Gaston on the other side of the door. The first thing Belle saw was a book hovering over her sofa. The gorgeous man holding it was already becoming visible; he must have heard her put her key in the lock.

“Hiya!” she chirped, shrugging off her coat and wrestling out of her extra long woolen scarf. She didn’t even have to see him to know that he was smiling when she heard him greet her with a simple, sweetly sounding, “Sweetheart.”

He was too slow in putting his book away and getting up, and Belle had rushed around the sofa, pushed him back down and fell down with him with a soft _oof_. “I love you,” she mewled, resting her head on his shoulder and reaching up to play with his hair.

“I love you,” he replied, delivering the words with a kiss on her cheek. He’d returned the words with an easy that warmed her heart and made her smile turn into an almost impossibly wide grin. She’d been wanting to say that all day. On her way back after meeting with Ruby, the words danced around in her head to the rhythm of her footsteps, making her feel giddy and more awake than she’d felt in a long time. Now that she’d said them, and he’d returned them, and his arm fit perfectly around her shoulder, she felt calm. Still a bit giddy, of course, but less jumpy and bouncy. Soothed. And hungry, but that was beside the point.

“Would you like me to preheat the oven, love?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you having pizza?”

Belle lifted her head from his shoulder. There was a fond smile on his face, but it faltered at the corners of his mouth when she frowned in confusion and said, “Did I tell you that before I left?”

Rumple knitted his eyebrows together, and his tongue peeked out from between his lips as he stared straight ahead in thought. He hummed, then shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah,” said Belle after a few seconds of bemusement. “That’d be great. Thanks, Rumple.”

A kiss to the top of her head, a brush of his fingers just underneath her chin, and he was off to her kitchen, humming a tune.

Huh.

…

A boyfriend who could float came in really handy when it was time to put up Halloween decorations, it turned out. Who needs a tall guy? Hers could string up her pumpkin string lights anywhere she liked without having to go through the bother of finding a ladder. She got him to hang her favorite garland from the mezzanine railing - black bats, orange jack-o-lanterns and white ghosts all in felt - and he tutted and shook his head while she giggled down below. He’d stopped turning invisible to do these things, now. These things he would have called unnatural only weeks before.

His logic was all off, there, anyhow. How was a garland seemingly stringing up itself any less odd than a floating Scotsman in her living room? She’d seen him shift from clothed to naked, now, too. They’d been reading in her bed, and reading had turned into kissing, and kissing had turned into heavy petting, and he must have been too focused on what her lips were doing to his fingers to bother turning invisible to get undressed, because Belle saw the fabric - which you really couldn’t call it - simply melt back, meld against him and shift seamlessly into his by now familiar bare skin. She hadn’t mentioned it to him in case he hadn’t meant to. He was still just a little bit sensitive about the differences between their bodies, but it seemed that he was loosening up a little bit, and Belle absolutely loved it. She trusted Rumple with her bare body, after all, and she wanted more than anything for him to do the same.

They’d spent the days before Halloween watching all of the horror movies Belle felt he absolutely had to see, starting with The Blair Witch Project, because Rumple was also set on understanding every single movie reference she’d ever made in conversation. After that, mostly awful ones that were good for a laugh. There were blankets, and there was popcorn, and there was spooning and kissing and the occasional whispered, “Bloody hell,” or an impressed, “Bit excessive,” when someone died in a particularly gruesome way, but in general, Rumple seemed to be pretty on board with the concept of horror movie nights spend cuddled up on the sofa.

On the day itself, too excited to sleep in, Belle decided on a morning walk to the forest, where Rumple insisted on finding that very same log so he could pull her onto his lap and kiss her until she could barely even keep herself upright. It was cold, but she was warm, and the smell of leaves and the sounds of creaking boughs was theirs and theirs alone. The streets were empty on their way back just before noon, with a thin fog lifting slowly to reveal the neighborhood’s decorations. There were plenty of vinyl ghosts in windows and styrofoam headstones in front yards making a mockery of death in a most charming manner. They whispered and laughed, and they barely ever stopped touching. There was always her hand in his, or his hand on her shoulder, or in the small of her back. Sometimes he’d brush the hair out of her face if the wind was being particularly playful.

Soon, all of the leaves would fall and snow might arrive, and they would trade in autumn walks for winter strolls and Christmas lights everywhere, hot chocolate when they got in, warm showers and fleece blankets to warm back up again. Spring would bring flowers and rainy days, umbrellas and puddles and discounted chocolate. And then finally summer would roll around and warm up the town, luring people from their homes to make of it anything they wanted it to be. Camping, swimming, shooting stars and fireflies, picnics, ice cream, terrifying thunderstorms at night with the window cracked just a little bit open to let the smell of rain in. Then the lush green leaves would dry up, the cold winds would make their return, and she and her love would do everything all over again, together.

“Aren’t you dressing up?” Rumple called out from the mezzanine as she poured out what was left of her Halloween candy into huge bowls to place by the door. There were never that many trick or treaters rampaging through the building each year, but there were enough to warrant a decent haul of candy. She would make sure to give Alicia an extra handful, too.

“Why would I? I’m not going out. I don’t even have a costume, anyway.”

“Really?” he teased. “I seem to remember seeing…”

Either he’d trailed off, or Belle hadn’t heard him over the crinkling of the empty plastic bags she was stuffing into the bin, but it didn’t matter, because then she heard the sound of her closet door opening and suddenly Belle realized what he was talking about. The year before, she’d been too lazy to come up with anything original, so she’d ordered this simple fox kigurumi from the internet. It was oversized and very comfy. More like a zip up onesie with a cute fox head for a hood and a tail sewn on. Total costume cop-out, but Gaston’s was worse. He’d worn a stupid ‘This is my costume’ t-shirt and looked smug all evening.

Belle heard Rumple snicker upstairs, and when she stepped back so she could look up to where he was _clearly_ waiting for her, he was indeed holding up the very same costume. Belle rolled her eyes and tried to contain her smirk, but still she climbed up and let him push the costume, hanger and all, into her waiting arms.

“A fox is very you. A clever creature with stunning eyes, lithe and graceful, known to knock over people’s bins in the middle of the night, et cetera.”

Belle snorted and brushed a bit of confetti from the sleeve.

“And why, exactly, would I wear this for your amusement?”

“To make up for calling me Sir Simon de Canterville yesterday, you pretentious bookworm,” he muttered, feigning insult with a hand slapped to his chest dramatically.

“Oh, come on,” teased Belle, shuffling closer to press a kiss to his pouting lips, “that was hardly an insult. I only meant you’re far too sweet to be frightening.”

He kissed her in return, then broke away and quickly hid his playful grin behind his mask again. Belle, too, was still playing along. She’d decided on wearing it the moment he suggested it. It was pretty comfortable TV-watching attire anyway, and that was just about the extent of their plans for the night.

Rumple crossed his arms over his chest and with a hint of laughter hiding just underneath the surface of his voice said, “You, my dear, called me the single most incompetent ghost in literary history, and I demand compensation.”

So that’s how Belle ended up handing out candy to kids while dressed as a fox. Alicia, dressed as a particularly adorable witch, got a few extra handfuls this time, because it seemed that there were fewer trick or treaters than the year before, and even Belle probably couldn’t finish the leftovers all on her own. When the very last trick or treaters came around - a pair of stragglers dressed as a mummy and Superman respectively - Rumple decided to make a cameo by sneaking in between her and the poor kids in question and in a deep voice whispering, “Boo.”

“Rumple!” she gasped as the kids ran away screaming and giggling with their bags full of candy. She closed the door in a hurry and fell back against it. Out he came, looking smug and mischievous, like he was when she found him sitting on top of a book shelf in the library. Exactly the same look that dared her to do something about that smirk on his face. Kiss it off, to be precise. And Belle had to admit to herself that it was a pretty effective tactic.

“Big man, huh? Scaring off a pair of ten-year-olds,” chided Belle, trying to look as stern as she possibly could while her belly was full of butterflies and her face was raring to burst into a grin.

“Figured this was my chance do some actual haunting for a change,” he muttered with a handsome lopsided smirk and a shrug.

“You, sir, couldn’t haunt your way out of a paper bag.”

“Is that so?”

“There’s absolutely nothing scary about you whatsoever. I believe we’ve had this discussion. It led to me wearing this costume.”

Rumple raised an eyebrow and asked, “How about this?”

He disappeared, and Belle shook her head, biting her smirking lip. What was he up to? Was he going to shout boo in her ear, now? Suddenly, the television screen flickered into life just in time for the ten o’clock news, and while that was _almost_ startling, she wasn’t even remotely impressed. “Ooh, current events. Spooky,” she teased. He snorted and the television clicked off again. “What else you got?”

A few seconds passed, and then a movement out of the corner caught her eye and almost sent her heart beating faster, but then she saw it was just the curtains moving about uselessly. “This really isn’t scary at all, Rumple,” she giggled. “I’m just picturing you waving the curtains around like an idiot.”

The curtains settled, and in the silence that followed, Belle was actually a little bit curious about what he’d do next, which led to a certain suspense that would definitely add to the surprise effect should he actually manage to come up with something that was scary, this time.

“And this?” he growled, suddenly right behind her. That _did_ make her heart skip a beat, but not exactly because she was terrified. He pulled off her silly fox hood, brushed her hair behind her shoulder and kissed her neck. Belle let herself lean back against him and murmured, “That’s just really nice.”

And they stumbled their way to the sofa together, kissing and touching and laughing. Belle crawled into his lap, straddled him and yelped with mock outrage when Rumple reached back and tugged on her beautiful fox tail.

“Too tempting,” he explained with a grin. “As is this.” And then he pulled her hood back on, turning her right back into the cartoonish fox. It was an oversized thing that drooped over her face, so she couldn’t see for a moment, but it didn’t matter, because he guided her face right where she needed it to be with his gentle fingers and caught her lips in a kiss.

Making out was difficult when there was a fox face in the mix and a pair of grins constantly trying to break through, but they certainly did try their very best. Digging her fingers into his hair helped; the softness was almost mesmerizing, and when she scratched at his scalp lightly with her fingertips, he made this gorgeous little noise that helped tame her grin so that she could kiss him properly and elicit more of those sounds. His hands moved up and down her back for a while and then perched on her thighs to squeeze, and Belle was about to tell him to help her get out of the damn fox costume already when, with Rumple’s tongue still tickling the roof of her mouth, suddenly the door came bursting open and a most unwelcome voice boomed into the room, shouting, “Hey, Belle. It’s just me. Got your key.”

Fucking Gaston. Belle snapped her head up, and found the guy staring at her, then at Rumple who had twisted his head around to look, then back at her with something of a horrified look on his face. Oh, God. She jumped up from her boyfriend’s lap and rushed over to push Gaston out of her apartment, probably looking extremely silly as she did so. But he wasn’t laughing. Of course he wasn’t. He’d just seen a ghost, and he knew it.

Belle went out into the hallway with him for a moment and kept the door ajar, but guarded it with her hand firmly on the doorknob.

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get in?”

“Sheesh, Belle. Chill. Someone left the front door open. It’s no big deal.”

“Why didn’t you bloody well knock, then?” she hissed.

“I didn’t used to have to knock.”

“You do now!” cried Belle. Gaston shrugged, made some sort of noise that almost amounted to an apology and rolled his eyes. She noticed a certain wobble when he switched his weight from one foot to the other and asked, “Are you drunk?”

“Yeah, dude. It’s Halloween.”

And yet, no costume.

“I was in the neighborhood. And drunk. Not, you know, in a pathetic way. The guys are waiting outside,” he slurred, pointing at what was decidedly not the exit to the building. “I realized I still had to give you the thing. The key.”

“Give me the key and go ask your mates for some water, Gaston,” she sighed.

“Alright, alright,” he whined, pushing the key into her outstretched hand. “But that guy…”

“What of him?”

Despite her outward confidence, Belle’s heart beat fast in her chest, worried that he might have noticed. Might have seen right through him, literally, and realized that he was a ghost. How could he not have? Perhaps he just hadn’t realized, what with the cheap beer coursing through the guy’s veins and fogging up his brain.

“Was he… Is he… Isn’t he…”

For fuck’s sake - couldn’t he hurry this up so she could start figuring out how to move on to damage control?

“…really old?”

Oh, thank God. Belle sighed in relief, then deadpanned, “Yeah. Don’t you think he’s hot for 125?” and gave Gaston a friendly push down the hallway and a wave goodbye. He was the very picture of baffled.

“Wait, what?”

“Thanks for the key! Bye! Drink lots of water!”

Belle pushed the door shut with a deep sigh, then fiddled with the keyring she used to keep all extras neatly together. Rumple was being oddly quiet.

“Rumple? He’s gone. He’s drunk. I don’t think he noticed. Hey, or maybe you’re just not that see-through anymore.”

Where was he? She assumed he’d made himself invisible again just in case Gaston came bursting through the door, but then why wasn’t he back already? Belle tossed the keyring into the little wooden fruit bowl she’d bought specifically for that purpose, then placed her hands on her hips and stared into the distance with a disapproving look.

“Are you going to try to scare me again?” she called out, narrowing her eyes. “I know you’re still here.”

In hindsight, perhaps she should have known that when she would finally hear his voice, it would be deep, rich, and right next to her ear, but as it happened, she was completely surprised when her invisible boyfriend growled, “Hot for 125, hm?” and gently pushed her back against the door.

She nearly screamed when his fingers dug into her ribs, knowing exactly where to poke to make her melt into a puddle of giggles. She squirmed and batted at where she thought his hands were, and then he made himself visible. Grinning, boyish, just a little pleased with himself. Beautiful. She draped her arms over his shoulders and let her head fall against his chest.

“So. Was I scary this time?” he teased, his voice deep and meaningful.

“No. You startled me. Doesn’t count.”

“Aw.”

He hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face up so he could kiss her nose and make her smile.

“He didn’t notice,” she said.

“What’s that, dear?”

His fingers were playing with the zipper of her costume, pulling it up and down and back up again just a few inches each time. He kissed her jawline, nudged the shell of her ear with his nose, kissed her neck, her cheek - was very clearly trying to steal her breath away again. It was working. She had to hold on a little tighter because her knees weren’t quite cooperating.

“He didn’t notice you were see-through,” Belle murmured. “You got that much more visible.”

“Let’s not talk about him.”

“This whole thing reminds me I should introduce you to my dad before he gets to an age where that might mean a heart attack.”

“Now you’re trying to scare _me_.”

His lips on that sensitive spot just under her ear told her he meant business. He had stopped toying with the zipper and it was pulled down completely now, and he slid the very tips of his fingers up under the t-shirt she was wearing underneath. Goosebumps. Instant heat between her thighs.

“I really thought I could frighten you, sweetheart. I have to say I’m disappointed,” he murmured against the skin of her neck. “I’ll just have to make you scream some other way, then.”

“Tacky,” Belle managed with a breathy giggle. “But yes, please.”

…

Hours later, they were naked and breathing slow with the pumpkin lights casting a warm orange glow on their bodies intertwined, and Belle thought about the letter she’d written to the man holding her close. Their story really wasn’t ending any time soon, she thought to herself as she tried to chase sleep in her lover’s arms. And what was an ending, anyway? The end to a narrative was sharp and defined - a border well guarded and easily reached; the turn of a last page or credits rolling across the screen would do the trick. But does a story really end, she wondered? More often than not, there was room to dream on at the end of a book or a movie. If a love story ended when all obstacles had been overcome and the weary couple finally embraced, there was a sense of a grand beginning. The start of a beautiful life of love and happiness earned and always implied.

It was rather pleasing and comforting for Belle to think that a story about something as big and mysterious and wonderful as love could never really be constrained. Not completely. Surely it would rise above all artificial banks and overflow, as long as there was someone willing to dream on. That’s what Belle was musing on in that sleepy state of utter content, tucked snug under her lover’s chin. It would be winter, soon. Then spring and summer and autumn, over and over again. It wouldn’t really end.

But her little girl with the monster in her closet still needed an ending of sorts, and as her heavy eyes fluttered shut, Belle decided that she would write an open door right at the end. Beyond that, the girl could have a life with her friend, the monster. A world full of closets to find each other in. Belle smiled and nuzzled her face into her Rumple’s chest with a sleepy sigh. She still needed a name, too.

“Penny, I think,” she murmured.

“Penny and Monster.” He sounded just as sleepy. “I like it.”

How did he… Hm.

The back of her head fit neatly into his palm and everything would be alright, because they were in love, and autumn would always come around again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be an epilogue. <3


	19. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's an ending, really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very nervous, and very grateful. That's it. I don't know what else to say. :)
> 
> Except I think now would be a pretty excellent time to remind you that awesome artist foxmurphy made some great art for this story, [right here](http://foxmurphy.tumblr.com/post/94559512405), and [here](http://foxmurphy.tumblr.com/post/101888751575). (Thank you again. You're amazing.)
> 
> Oh, and hey, did I ever mention the fact that I didn't think this thing was going to be very long at all? 30k tops, I figured. Oops.

“For someone who’s seen a lot of horror movies, you sure are confident we’re not gonna get stabbed to death by some escaped lunatic.”

“Look, Luce. If you didn’t want to do this, you shouldn’t have told me about it, and you know it.”

Lucy sighed but bit her tongue. The forest floor was soft and uneven, but the moon was out, so she could just about keep herself from tripping over roots and branches as she followed her friend through the dense undergrowth. It would be midnight soon, and Halloween would be over, but she had a feeling that their night was only getting started. She was nervous, and just a little bit cold, but if there was anyone in this world Lucy would follow right into a horror movie scenario, it was Angie.

“I don’t know what you’re scared about, anyway. You don’t even believe in that kinda stuff.”

“I believe in escaped lunatics with meat cleavers and accidentally falling and breaking my neck.”

“Damn, Luce. Do you want me to look up the nearest insane asylum on my phone or will you believe me when I tell you we’re not going to get stabbed?”

Lucy sighed again. She was nervous, that was all. Dark scary forests in the middle of the night made her nervous. Sneaking out of the house at night made her nervous. Angie made her nervous. She was seventeen - a year older than Lucy - and she was the coolest person she’d ever met, and for some reason she had latched on to her when she moved to this town and decided that they should be friends. It made her really fucking nervous, because Lucy had no idea why Angie didn’t think she was the most boring, unadventurous person in the world, and she was just waiting for her to realize that. They were three months into this friendship, and she still hadn’t caught on.

“My parents are gonna kill me if they find out I was out in the woods this late,” she grumbled.

“Ah, that means you think you’ll outrun the lunatics. Good attitude. Much better. Now help me out, here. You said straight ahead once we made a left turn off the path, right?”

“Yeah, and then right when we get to the huge tree stump, and straight ahead for another ten minutes.”

“Almost there, then!”

Yes, almost there, and gravity chose that exact moment to score a point when Lucy tripped over a fallen branch and landed face first into the cold, damp layers of dead leaves with a muffled, “Fuck.”

Angie was there in an instant, having rushed to her side to grab her by the elbow and help her back up again. “Don’t do that!” she demanded, her brow creased and her brown eyes flitting over her face to make sure she was alright.

“Oh, _don’t_ fall on my face,” she muttered, once she was upright and steady on her legs again. “Got it.” Angie rolled her eyes and gave her elbow a final squeeze before letting go.

“Your parents wouldn’t kill you,” she assured her, reaching out to brush away a bit of dirt from her cheek. “They’d just tell you to bring a flashlight next time.”

“I thought you were bringing one.”

“I didn’t think we’d need one,” she mumbled with a shrug.

Of course not. Lucy shifted her weight to her other foot and realized with a sharp hiss that she must have knocked her knee into a rock or a branch or something like that when she fell, because it stung like a bitch. She stumbled and had to grab onto Angie’s shoulder for balance.

“You alright?” she asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

“Yeah, it’s fine. I can walk.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” she said, forcing a smile to reassure her. Angie wouldn’t object if Lucy told her she wanted to go home now, and secretly, despite her protests, she didn’t want that at all. Angie always urged her to do things she thought she’d regret, but it never turned out that way. If it weren’t for her, her life would be much, much more boring. Slightly less nerve-wracking, but, you know, boring as hell.

It took them a little longer than they’d planned to reach the tree stump, with Lucy limping just a little bit and holding them both back. When they got there, Angie helped her down onto the stump and joined her with a great sigh. It was kind of peaceful, here. There was an owl hooting in the distance, and the slight breeze only rustled the very tops of the pines. Perhaps there weren’t any escaped serial killers here, after all. Good thing, because Lucy definitely couldn’t outrun them, now.

“If it’s true,” said Angie, “it would be the most romantic thing ever. Don’t you think?”

She nodded, but apparently that wasn’t enough of an answer for Angie, because she bumped her shoulder into hers, and when she looked over, she was smiling at her with her eyebrows raised in expectation.

“Yeah. If it’s true, sure,” she muttered. “But it’s obviously not.”

“Why would your grandma lie?”

“Cause I was like, ten when she told me the story. Adults lie to kids - that’s what they do.”

“But you said your mom and dad didn’t deny it, though.”

“They only stopped pretending Santa was real last year, Angie. They’re insane.”

Angie shrugged, reached into her purse and found her pack of cigarettes and her lighter. In a few seconds, she’d offer her one, and Lucy wasn’t sure she was going to say no this time. When she got home, her parents would be asleep, so they definitely wouldn’t smell it on her. She liked the way it made her feel dizzy and then utterly calm. She liked the way it made her look, if indeed it made her look anything like Angie when she smoked.

“Want one?”

“Yeah.”

Yeah, sure. Hopefully she’d light it for her, too. Her brown eyes looked completely black in the flame. Slightly terrifying. Angie reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear, her fingers brushing against her neck when she pulled back and giving her goosebumps.

“Don’t want a repeat of last time, do we?”

“Right,” she said, grinning. Last time, in the park after school, she’d lit it herself and accidentally got a strand of hair or two caught in the flame. The smell was pretty terrible. This time, with her hair safely out of the way, it went without a hitch, and with a puff and a stifled cough, her cigarette was lit.

“Anyway,” Angie sighed, breathing out her lungfuls of smoke, “I think you have the coolest family in the world.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I mean it! Compared to the four generations of accountants marrying other accountants in my family, yours is insanely cool. Think about it. Your mom and dad are the chillest, your grandmother _and_ your great grandmother were chefs, your great grandfather was a rockstar, and your great great aunt was a famous author.”

“She wasn’t really related, though,” mumbled Lucy.

“Whatever. She was like an aunt to your grandma, you said. She left you guys everything in her will, for fuck’s sake - she’s family. And if _this_ is true and you’ve seriously got a pair of family ghosts, I’m gonna need your parents to adopt me.”

Lucy snorted, but the way Angie had summed everything up like that, it actually did sound pretty neat.

“Or, you know, get into the family tree some other way,” she added softly. Lucy nearly choked on the smoke, but managed to cover it up by turning away from her just in time to hide her shock. Angie seemed not to have noticed, because she was merrily smoking away, bouncing her knees up and down excitedly.

She really thought she was going to see a ghost tonight, wasn’t she? It was oddly adorable. When she told Angie her grandma’s story of her mom’s best friend and her ghost boyfriend, she hadn’t expected her to care much at all, but her friend had been rapt. Sitting on her bedroom floor, listening to music she’d never heard of before, incense burning on her dresser; it had felt amazing to have Angie hanging on her lips. And it was true, what she had said before. She should have seen this coming. She really should have known Angie would want to see for herself.

“You’re related to a ghost, man. I wish I were related to a ghost.”

“She’s not a blood relative, though, I keep having to tell you that.”

“I’m not talking about her, I’m talking about him.”

Huh. That was true, actually. Well, according to her grandmother, of course, who was probably just trying to get her to go back to bed by telling her a nice, long and confusing story with lots of genealogical details a ten-year-old would never know how to process in one sitting.

“That’s what your grandma said, right? That he’s your great grandfather’s great great grandfather?”

Lucy narrowed her eyes and bit her lip in thought, but the words didn’t make any sense no matter how long she thought about them. A jumble of ‘great’s and ‘grand’s - that’s all she heard. “Fucking hell, that’s complicated,” she sighed, blowing out smoke.

“It’s really not! I, uh, got a little excited last night and drew up the family tree.”

“You did what?” she blurted, screwing up her face.

“Don’t give me that look!” Angie sputtered. Lucy tried not to laugh, but it was pretty difficult. Angie rarely got flustered, and when she did, Lucy relished it.

“It’s not creepy! I just tried to make sense of it with the info you gave me. Basically, there’s you, there’s your parents, there’s your grandma who says she actually knew him when she was little, there’s her mother who was Belle’s best friend, and she’s the one who accidentally had kids with one of the guy’s descendants.”

“Accidentally?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” she laughed, half-heartedly punching her in the arm. “You know what I mean. Anyway, you’ve got the DNA of some Scottish dude who died like two hundred years ago, right? That’s a fact.”

“Right.”

“Well, there’s a chance you’re going to see him tonight. Isn’t that amazing?”

Angie’s grin was infectious, but Lucy bit down on her lip to stop from joining in. This was silly. This was ridiculous. “Look, it could all be bullshit,” she muttered. Angie sighed and slumped.

“Why would your grandma tell you she was babysat by a ghost?” she asked. “What kind of weird-ass random lie is that?”

“It wasn’t random. She told me that story cause I said I was scared of ghosts.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. The details are just too perfect and I _want_ it to be true. Him illustrating her books for her? Slightly awkward family dinners with nervous in-laws? Sewing the buttons of your grandma’s doll’s dress back on and letting her brush his hair? Come the fuck on, Luce. That’s amazing stuff.”

“Mine’s a family of storytellers and liars, Angie.”

Angie narrowed her eyes at her and sucked in another few puffs of smoke, shaking her head disapprovingly. “Show me the book again,” she demanded, holding out her hand.

Lucy sighed, twisted out of her backpack and dug inside for the book. The spine was held together with tape and the edges of the cover were starting to peel, but it was still good. It was her favorite childhood book - a present from her grandma when she was little. Penny and Monster.

Angie took it from her slowly, with careful movements, because she knew how much it meant to her. She turned it around and looked at the back. There was a little picture of the author, there. Her hair in a messy bun, sitting at a desk with a yellow mug in her hand, smiling.

“She’s so pretty. You’ve got the same color hair.”

“We’re not related,” Lucy sighed again. How many times was she going to have to say that tonight?

“I know. I’m just saying. Pretty hair.”

“That’s what my grandma said she looked like when she saw her, which is weird, cause she was like, eighty or something when she died.”

“So what did they look like when your grandma saw them? You never said.”

“She just saw them sitting by the lake at night. They were sitting on the grass, holding each other, kinda nuzzling their heads together and looking out over the water.”

“Okay, that’s fucking adorable, but what did they actually look like?”

“Um. She just called them figures. Translucent, I guess. But yeah, she was young, she said. Not like an old lady. That, along with, y’know, basic knowledge of the laws of physics, was a red flag to me. That just sounds too perfect to be true.”

“I don’t care. I just really want this to be true, man. I can’t help it,” Angie mumbled around her cigarette.

Lucy nodded and tapped the ashes from hers onto the forest floor, stamping out the orange glow when she spotted it. Serial killers and forest fires - she was not interested in running from either tonight.

“I asked my grandma why she looked young, cause I was already pretty damn skeptical at age ten.” Angie interrupted her with a loud cackle. Lucy cringed, the homicidal maniacs potentially lurking in the bushes still floating around in the back of her mind. “She had a theory that that was just how she saw herself all of this time,” she continued, once Angie had settled down. “Or, yeah, two theories. The other one was that it was how Rumple saw her, even when she was old and grey, so when he went looking for her, that’s how he found her.”

“Like… in death? Or purgatory or whatever?”

“I guess.”

Angie bit her lip and grinned again.

“What?” asked Lucy.

“That’s just really romantic, man. I can’t believe you’re not excited about this.”

Angie stubbed out her cigarette butt and Lucy followed her example.

“Hey,” said Angie, her voice deeper. “Maybe she chose to look young cause she didn’t want to be a ghost cougar.”

Lucy laughed, shook her head and said, “Well, my grandma said that it was probably subconscious. She knew from a picture taken a few days before Rumple died that his hair was shorter than it was when he was a ghost.”

“Huh.”

“Said he liked it better longer. Must have just… subconsciously decided to look like that. I guess. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense, but it does, you know?”

“Yeah.”

Angie gave her back the book, and Lucy took a moment to stare at the front cover like she often did when she was little. A little girl with dark skin and braided hair holding up a lantern in a bubble of light. Surrounding her was darkness, and from that darkness came a hand. Pitch black. Furry, claw-like. Indistinguishable from the darkness from which it was reaching. It had scared her, first, that picture. She almost didn’t want to read it, but her grandma had assured her that it had a happy ending, so she bravely gave it a try and fell in love with it.

“But this is all hypothetical,” Lucy sighed, carefully sliding the book back in her bag. “I’m still calling bullshit on the whole thing.”

Angie sighed, rolled her eyes, stood and offered her hand to help her up.

“Let’s go find out, then.”

And off they went, a little less slow now that her knee wasn’t hurting quite so much anymore, but a little more careful, too. They were deep into the woods and only going deeper still, but Lucy didn’t worry for a minute that they’d lose their way, because she’d spent many summer days in these woods, wandering around, daydreaming about fairies and witches, unicorns and werewolves. Never at night, though, and never on Halloween.

“Um. Luce?”

She looked up from where she’d been peering at the forest floor, watching out for roots and branches, and saw that Angie was staring straight ahead.

“What is it?”

“Look,” she whispered.

Whatever it was, Angie was blocking her view of it, so Lucy stepped to the side and gasped when she saw that there was light up ahead.

“Family of yours?” Angie whispered. “I mean… living family.”

“No. No-one should be here,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper, her throat suddenly dry. “We should go back. What if it’s burglars?”

“We’ll just look through the window and if whoever’s in there is wearing a bloodied clown suit, _then_ we’ll go.”

Jesus, that mental image was one she could have done without. Her heart was beating fast in her chest and her stomach clenching like mad, and Lucy didn’t want to die, but if she really had to, she’d prefer to do it by her friend’s side.

“Maybe someone just left the light on the last time they were there.”

“I hope not.”

“Really? You prefer a serial killer to a high electricity bill, now? Make up your mind.”

If she hadn’t been scared out of her mind in that moment, Lucy would have gently but firmly elbowed her in the side and shot back some sort of harmless insult, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the light in the window and she couldn’t move her limbs. Not quite.

“Angie, I think… I think we should just go back.”

A sudden soft touch of lips on her cheek. A firm touch in the small of her back. She melted, along with her resolve.

“Come on,” urged Angie. “It’ll make for a great anecdote.”

Unfair. A little push in her back made her put one foot in front of the other, again and again, slow but steady and they were actually doing it, Jesus Christ. They were actually sneaking up on whatever or whoever it was that had turned the lights on in the cabin no-one had been in for months. Fuck, and she hadn’t erased her internet history in months, either. What picture would her parents use at the funeral? Not this year’s school pictures, she hoped - her hair had been a mess that day.

They kept to the side of the small path between the overgrown bramble bushes and towering pine trees and tried not to step on too many twigs as they approached the cabin’s west side. There was a small window there that would give them a view of the entire living room area, Lucy knew, so that’s where she directed Angie with a tug at her sleeve and a nod of the head. Slowly, silently, her heart racing and her lungs about to burst with the breath she’d been too afraid to release, Lucy peeked into the window and her heart stopped. Just stopped and fell straight down into her stomach, because there they were. There they actually were. Angie joined her at the window, looked over her shoulder and gasped.

There were two faint, all but colorless figures sitting on the couch in the middle of the room, and they had an almost completely unobstructed view of them. Lucy recognized the one with the longer hair immediately. It wasn’t up in a bun like in the picture, but she recognized her eyes. It was Belle French, the woman who had written her favorite childhood books; and that meant that the man with the long hair and the adoring smile on his face was Rumple, the man whose existence had meant that of hers. If it hadn’t been for him, Lucy would not have been standing there that chilly October night with her crush’s breath tickling the back of her neck and her hand on her shoulder, squeezing tight.

It was difficult to see which limb belonged to which ghost at first, because they were see-through and sitting close with their legs tangled and their hands moving slowly but constantly. It took her a while to figure out that Rumple was moving his hands up and down Belle’s arms. Their faces were close together, and they were talking and smiling. Murmuring, probably, because Lucy couldn’t hear anything through the relatively thin windowpane. She vaguely registered Angie grabbing her hand, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight. This was surreal.

And then they kissed, and Lucy heard Angie try to stifle a gasp and a giggle. Oh, fuck - and they didn’t look like they’d be stopping any time soon. Her hands were up in his hair, now, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, which Lucy didn’t actually think was even possible. There was a pair of kissing ghosts on the couch she used to jump up and down on when she was a kid, when they spent their summer weekends here. God, it hadn’t even been three months since she last visited the cabin, and there hadn’t been any strange ghost stuff at all, then. Now? Ghosts sucking face, clear as day.

It felt a little awkward to stare while they were making out like a couple of teenagers, unwittingly _in front of_ a couple of teenagers, so Lucy took a moment to look around and see if they’d been up to anything besides… that. There was a Scrabble game set up, abandoned on the table. Two books laid out on the side table, face down to save the page.

“Luce. _Luce,_ ” Angie hissed. “You’re witnessing your great great great great grandfather and his girlfriend making out right now.”

“Shh.”

“If you don’t think that’s the coolest shit - ”

“Shh!”

“Relax! They don’t even know we’re here! Look at them!”

Lucy tore her eyes away from the Scrabble board and saw that they were, in fact, seriously not noticing much of anything other than each other. He now had his hands in her hair, and she had hers splayed against his chest, and they were sinking slowly down together until suddenly she seemed to change her mind, climbed up from the couch, kissed him on the nose and said something. He nodded, and she walked away, and that’s when Lucy saw the strangest thing.

There was something connecting them, stretching and thinning the further she walked. She was rummaging through a drawer, now, and he was watching her and smiling. Whatever it was, it moved through the air just a bit, gently up and down in a waving, curling motion. It was transparent and slightly distorted like a mirage on hot asphalt right in the middle, but where it neared their bodies it gained a bit of color and seamlessly melded into their chests, or their sides, or their backs, depending on how they were positioned relative to one another.

Belle came back carrying two lit candles, put them on the coffee table, then moved out of sight for a moment. The overhead light went off, which was startling, and she saw her settling back down into his lap. His arms came wrapping around her with no hesitation. The candle light was just bright enough for Lucy to catch their meaningful grins right before they fit their mouths together again. And oh, fuck, his hands were clearly on her ass, now. Time to go.

“I, uh. I think we better go,” whispered Lucy.

“ _We’re_ being creepy,” Angie agreed.

But it was difficult to stop looking, so they backed away instead. The last thing Lucy saw before the two were out of sight was Rumple moving her down onto the couch to cover her body with his, and she knew that they had left them to it just in time.

They turned and walked away in silence, and Lucy didn’t have to look at Angie to know that her eyes were as wide as hers. They moved through the trees and the brambles in silence until for some reason, Lucy felt that she ought to turn around before the cabin was out of sight completely, and when she did, she saw more than just the glow of the candles Belle had lit in one of the windows. It wasn’t lamp light, either.

Huh.

The only sound was the wind playing with the treetops and leaves crunching underfoot. They walked until they reached the very same tree stump they’d rested on before and, without either one suggesting it, sat there once again.

“They’re soul mates now,” said Angie softly. “If soul mates exist, they’re definitely it. You saw that, right?”

“They were connected,” she mused with a nod. She drew her knees up and hugged them to her body. The trunk was mossy and slippery, so it took her a few tries to get her feet on.

“Do they even realize?”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure they weren’t completely here, you know? They were…”

“Otherwise occupied.”

“In their own little world, I mean,” Lucy laughed nervously.

She wished Angie would offer her another cigarette. She didn’t want to make a habit of it, but it felt so strange sitting here, not quite knowing what to do now that her world view had been… majorly adjusted. Smoking was _something_ , at least. Stupid, but something. Her hands were shaking a bit, and she didn’t know how in the hell she was supposed to fall asleep tonight.

“So,” said Lucy with a forced chuckle. “Ghosts. What the fuck, right?”

“Luce?”

“Hm?”

She turned to find Angie’s face much closer than she thought she would be, her dark eyes even darker. And then she kissed her. Soft lips caught hers by surprise - a lingering touch that when it fell away, still tingled just a little bit. Lucy blinked. Angie blushed and smiled.

“Thanks,” she said softly. “This was an awesome date.”

Date? Lucy would never have had the courage to straight up ask her out on a date. She must have made some sort of confused noise, because Angie frowned and with a hint of something vulnerable in her voice asked her, “It was a date, right?”

Well, it was news to her, but she wouldn’t even think to start complaining. So she swallowed her objections and nodded, perhaps a bit too eagerly, because Angie smirked and patted her on the head fondly.

“Okay, good. Got me worried there for a moment. Do you wanna just sit here for a while longer?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”

Angie reached into her purse again and offered her another cigarette.

“Hey, maybe for our second date, we could go look for other strange creatures in your family tree,” Angie joked. “A werewolf uncle. A witch niece. A mermaid cousin in the lake, maybe.”

If she hadn’t yet seen two ghost lovers in her family’s cabin, if the coolest person she knew hadn’t yet dragged her into the middle of the woods and kissed her, Lucy would have scoffed at the mere thought.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

…

“Just a little while longer. See that great big tree stump? We’re almost there.”

“You said that some time ago, darling.”

“You’ll stop complaining in a minute,” Belle sang. “Well, ten minutes, to be completely honest.”

It was a lovely late autumn evening, and the sun was setting lower and making the leaves cast pretty shadows in the golden light. Belle was guiding her boyfriend through the woods, trying to pay attention to where they were going and at the same time making sure she could commit his faint golden glow to memory. He wasn’t really glowing like he usually did when she made him come, but the light caught the faintness of him in such a beautiful way it was difficult not to stare. Like a dusty attic room with sunset light streaming in from a window. Something like that.

“If you get us lost, it’ll be me foraging for berries to keep you from starving, so you’d better keep your eyes on the trail,” he grumbled, tugging on her scarf playfully. Belle rolled her eyes, squeezed his hand and pulled him along again.

Crunchy red leaves and snapping twigs, woodpeckers up above their heads and creaking branches, too. From the corner of her eye, Belle spotted the occasional squirrel, but she was always too late in pointing them out to Rumple, who teased her and pretended not to believe she’d seen one at all. His playfulness made her want to kiss him, but she really wanted to get them to their destination, too. She was too excited to pause. Too happy to slow her feet.

And it didn’t take them too long to find what they had been looking for. Up ahead, at the end of the path, stood a cabin right in the middle of a small clearing. Belle sang, “What do you think?” and caught Rumple’s arm in her own. He was just standing there, his eyes a little wider than normal, gawping.

“Whose is this, Belle?” he asked softly.

“Ours, if we want it.”

“It’s for sale?”

“Yup! I’ve already told the owner I’d be willing to make an offer. I’ve seen pictures and it’s perfect.”

He blinked, knitted his eyebrows together and gave her a confused look.

“Why didn’t you tell me, love?”

“Wanted to surprise you, I guess,” she said. She let go of his arm and took his hand instead, pulling him along to inspect the cabin up close.

“Are you buying this just because I once said I liked the idea of living in the woods?”

“No?” she lied. Rumple narrowed his eyes and shook his head to tell her that he wasn’t having any of it. Belle bit her lip, gave him her best innocent look and confessed,

“Well, partly. But I love this place! And I haven’t bought it yet. It’s your money, too.”

“Barely.”

“Just… come on. Go and have a look inside. I’ll wait here. If you hate it, we’ll go.”

He folded his arms over his chest and tried to look displeased, but Belle knew him well enough by now. He liked it, really. He hadn’t even seen the inside, and Belle knew that she almost had him hooked already. She’d let him swim circles around the bait a little while longer, though. She’d reel him in soon enough.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” he sighed. He kissed her forehead and did just as she suggested; he walked straight through the wall and disappeared inside. But then not ten seconds later, Belle heard the sound of a lock clicking, and the door opened to reveal him standing there, looking a bit smug.

“Spare key right by the door.”

“Not ghost burglar proof, then.”

She practically bounced her way inside, and he closed the door for her - still ever the gentlemen when he wasn’t pouting. The place smelled like firewood and cinnamon candles, and Belle made a mental note to buy some for their new house, which was pink, huge, beautiful and decorated in warm colors. Some cinnamon scented candles would fit right in.

“You’re throwing a lot of money around, lately, aren’t you?” he teased. “Big spender.”

“I’m not nearly done yet! We need another Scrabble set to keep here at _all_ times, and this shelf space is a great excuse to buy more books. Oh, and I want even more bookcases. We could pretty much line that entire wall with books, couldn’t we?”

She was, perhaps, a little _too_ excited, because she felt his amused grin on her even with her back turned. Belle forced herself to calm down just a little bit so she could turn from one tactic to the other, and with a meaningful smile sauntered up to Rumple, who was feigning insult at the admittedly garishly patterned curtains.

“It could be like a little getaway,” she mewled, running a finger from his shoulder all the way down his arm. She felt him laugh silently under her touch. “Could get us out of babysit duty once in a while when that genetic plague you unleashed welcomes its newest member in a few months.”

“Quit blaming me for that,” he mock whined. “I didn’t just pop into existence, myself, you know.”

Belle laughed but wouldn’t let herself be distracted. She kissed him on the shoulder and continued, “No-one could find us here unless we wanted them to. We’ve got the money. There’s no reason we couldn’t do this. There’s no reason we shouldn’t, either.”

“Help me picture it,” he sighed. Belle smirked. As if he wasn’t completely convinced already. But alright, she could play this little game. She would play it, and win it, and pick her prize at the end of it.

“This,” she sang, spreading her arms and twirling around just once, “is the room in which you’re going to try to beat me at Scrabble. We’re getting a more comfortable sofa in here, obviously, for movie nights. And for making you feel better about losing.”

His laughter was dark and enticing. He knew what was coming, didn’t he? Good. She grabbed his hand and pulled him along into another room.

“This is the bathroom. We’re going to take long bubble baths together in here.”

“Are we?”

“Mhm. Candles and everything. Rose petals if I’m feeling particularly tacky. Can you picture it?”

“Almost, sweetheart.”

Belle smirked and guided him along into the kitchen.

“This is where you’re going to cook me breakfast,” she started, hardly pausing to let him look around before dragging him into the final room and adding, “and this is where you’ll serve me said breakfast, because you’ll have fucked me so thoroughly I’ll be unable to move from this bed right here.”

The sound Rumple made then was something of a cross between a groan and a laugh, and Belle giggled as she let herself fall down on the bed. The springs creaked. That might be kind of funny in a minute, when she claimed her prize.

“What are you doing over there?” he muttered in a deep, warning voice, a smirk dancing around the corners of his mouth. Belle leaned back on her elbows and raised her eyebrows.

“What are _you_ doing just standing there?” she asked, kicking off her boots with a cheeky grin.

He sighed and rolled his eyes, but Belle could see that he was only just a little bit nervous. She could work with that. He sat down on the edge of the bed, so Belle scooted as close as she could and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Do you like it? Can we buy it?”

His arm fit perfectly over her shoulders. He pulled her close against his chest and buried his face in her hair, muffling the words a little bit when he said, “I love it. If you want it, so do I.”

Belle squealed - victorious, as usual, but never any less pleased. She crawled into his lap and pushed him down, making him laugh and groan nervously at the same time.

“Belle, what do you think you’re doing?” he growled, running his hands up and down her sides slowly but firmly. His touches, the roughness of his voice - it all added to the flames, and he knew that. Of course he knew that. One look in his dark, beautiful eyes told her that.

“Can’t a pair of lovers get a little close in their own property?” she mewled, kissing his cheek, then his nose, then _almost_ his lips but playfully dodging his kiss when he leaned up to catch her.

“It’s not yours yet, darling, and this is very, very wrong.”

“Not _ours_ yet,” she corrected him, taking a small break from nipping at his ear. “And it’s only just a little bit wrong. Just wrong enough to tempt you. Right?”

Belle shot him the look that always sealed the deal. Lip between her teeth, eyes slightly narrowed and fluttering from his lips to his eyes meaningfully. He shot his most dangerous look right back, with his half hooded eyes and a hint of teeth in his predatory smile sending heat straight down between her legs, and suddenly he’d grabbed her and turned them over, the bed audibly protesting under their shifting weight. But Rumple paid no heed; he could kiss her properly now and sank his fingers deep into her hair. His other arm was tight around her waist, tighter still when Belle writhed up against him in such a way to push him into kissing her harder, deeper. Sometimes, he forgot to let her up for air, and she would have to break the kiss herself. Like right now, with a gasp from her and a whispered apology from him.

“Are you tired of hearing me say I love you, yet?” she breathed, reaching up to play with the hair that was falling down to brush and tickle her cheeks as he hovered over her. He shook his head, and his smile made Belle’s heart beat just a little bit faster.

“Good. I love you.”

“I love you.”

They were just a pair of strange lovers spending yet another Halloween together. In the darkness of the woods when the sun had finally set, there was no-one around to see that curious glow in one of the windows of the old cabin, apart from a solitary moth beating its wings against the glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. You've all been so kind and encouraging and ridiculously important to me the last few months.
> 
> I've gone through several rough drafts of this epilogue, and I've scrapped a bunch of stuff I felt wasn't necessary. There’s also a lot of background stuff I’ve written purely as a framework for myself, so if you have any questions you feel need answering, ask away in the comments. I’ll get back to you with an answer, or, if I can't actually answer your question, a picture of a dog or something. I don't know. Even if you're reading this months from now. I'll still get back to you. :)
> 
> Okay. Well. Thank you, again. It's been fun. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Girl and Her Lantern](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6797071) by [shannabelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannabelle/pseuds/shannabelle)




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